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Pollen Transport in the Dark: Hawkmoths Prefer Non Crop Plants to Crop Plants in an Agricultural Landscape

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Abstract

In many previous studies hawkmoths have been found to be involved in nocturnal pollination of many plants. But their role in crop pollination is still unexplored. This study tried to evaluate their potential to carry pollens of crop. Hawkmoths were collected by light traps and slides were made from the pollen attached to their body. The hawkmoths and the pollens were identified. A pollen transport network was created using the data. The species level indices of each plant species in the network were estimated. Only a small fraction of pollens were made by the crops among the total types of pollens carried by the hawkmoths. Rest of the pollens belonged to that of the non crops. The species level indices suggest the crop pollens to be relatively less important in the network as reflected in the lower values of species degree and species strength. The higher species level specialisation values of crop pollens suggested they are restricted to be carried by few hawkmoth species only. It is clearly revealed that hawkmoths carry mostly non crop pollens, not crop pollens.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Department of Zoology, University of Calcutta where we have done this study and statistical analysis. The study was carried under the project entitled “Enhancing the Relationship between People and Pollinators in Eastern India” funded by the Darwin Initiatives, UK granted through Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Government of United Kingdom and Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India provided the fellowship to the first author. We also thank Prof. Nimai Chandra Barui for identification of pollens, Mr. Arnob Chatterjee and Mr. Supratim Laha for the artwork.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Ballygunge Science College, 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700019, India

    Pushan Chakraborty & Parthiba Basu

  2. Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, University of Coventry, Coventry, UK

    Barbara Smith

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  1. Pushan Chakraborty
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Correspondence to Parthiba Basu.

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Fig. S1

The pollen grains collected from hawkmoths which remained unidentified. The photographs were taken at 40× of Olympus Binocular Microscope (Model number CX31) taken by ProgRes Capture Pro software version 2.8.8 (EPS 5455 kb)

Fig. S2

The identified pollen grains collected from hawkmoths. The photographs were taken at 40× of Olympus Binocular Microscope (Model number CX31) taken by ProgRes Capture Pro software version 2.8.8 (EPS 19832 kb)

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Chakraborty, P., Smith, B. & Basu, P. Pollen Transport in the Dark: Hawkmoths Prefer Non Crop Plants to Crop Plants in an Agricultural Landscape. Proc Zool Soc 71, 299–303 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12595-017-0211-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12595-017-0211-5

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