Jana Vamosi, Ph.D, postdoctoral associate at the University of
Calgary and Tiffany Knight, Ph.D., assistant professor of
biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St.
Louis, and their collaborators have performed an exhaustive
global analysis of more than 1,000 pollination studies which
included 166 different plant species and found that, in areas
where there is a great deal of plant diversity, plants suffer
lower pollination and reproductive success. For some plant
species, this reduction in fruit and seed production could push
them towards extinction. One reason that pollen becomes limiting
to plants in regions of high diversity may be increased
competition between the plants -- there are more plant species
vying for the services of pollinators. Also, when there are a
lot of species around, plants become more separated from other
individuals of the same species, causing pollinators to have to
fly long distances to deliver pollen. When pollinators do
arrive, they may deliver lots of unusable pol