Nova had an interesting show where they addressed 'keystone species' where a number of unexpected results could come from a single species absence or decline.
It started with what we might think of as traditional predators that feed on other species to keep them from getting out of control. Bass in a river would keep minnows from devouring all the plants.
But it went even farther than that where a traditional large predator's absence might lead to an ant population getting out of control and changing the growth (or lack of it) of an ecosystem.
Other situations where even just predators not scaring deer enough to keep them moving would result in forests floors being cleared out by deer and changing what trees grew and and eradication of entire plant species in an ecosystem and such. You wouldn't notice it at first but later on the results can be dramatic.
I suspect what we think the results of what a moth does, or any given animal might be quite a bit different than we expect.
Keystone species are fascinating and show how we really need more systemic thinking.
The one that tons of people have seen is how reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone changed the course of rivers, made them less eroding, and generally increased ecosystem diversity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q&t=1s
Beavers are another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pk_VD1-8BM Remember how we learned a lot of westward expansion in US colonial days was led by mountainmen trapping beavers to use their pelts in fancy european hats and we kept going further west because we kept killing off the beavers while demand for fancy hats kept going up? Turns out when you remove all those beaver ponds that would slow down water flow, you end up with a lot more erosion, incision, and flooding -- the landscape we have now. Fisherman think beaver ponds decrease fish populations because they tend to have warmer water, but this doesn't quite pass the thousands-years-of-coevolution-before-beaver-extermination sniff test... some experiments have showed that beaver ponds actually increase fish stock because they create lots of fish nurseries, and trout and salmon can instinctively swim up through beaver dams.
Then when you consider how things like aquaponics incorporate fish because fish poop makes great fertilizer, it starts to become clear how important beaver ponds can be to nutrient cycling in these ecosystems. One of the most fascinating fish-based nutrient flows is salmon migrations... they're hatched upstream, put on most of their growth and biomass in the ocean, and then migrate back upstream to die. Well, when they die, their bodies bring all those nutrients that washed down out of the watershed back up into the watershed, where they're spread by the bears and hawks that eat them, creating a grand flow of energy through the landscape that gives ecosystem stability. And beaver ponds have historically created the habitat needed to support this critical piece of the machine.
A fascinating example of how removal of keystone species can permanently stunt ecosystems is this guy trying to reforest scotland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAGHUkby2Is We think of scotland as grassy rolling hills, but the scotland of lore was actually covered in forest. This guy is finding that the forests can't grow back because deer populations are too high and they just eat any small saplings that try to take hold. Without reintroducing keystone predators like wolves, he's found that small interventions like fencing off the edges of tree thickets for a few years until the saplings can take hold can start the healing process.
You're right, but it's also not a settled or well understood concept yet. This whole idea got running with ecological cascades, and it turns out that these are all complex systems. But just adding or removing a species doesn't have one effect, or even an effect at all in some cases. We have to be careful not to trumpet one or two successes of eco-forming, because lots of people will read that and repeat it and think that doing X is always going to have a positive effect.
Reintroducing the wolves was part of a much larger mis-management of the park where we basically destroyed 80-90% of Yellowstone over a half century, by doing things like screwing with the animal population, or the controlled burning by indigenous/native populations.
How much does a wolf cost? wouldn't it be more cost effective to buy a bunch of wolves and set them loose, rather than maintaining fences for years and then building a new set of fences?
Those are interesting thought experiments, but how do we really know it would play out like? Species that aren't predated will keep their own numbers down through fighting afaik.
We know because of the results of actual experiments and observations. Seals keep kelp forests alive by eating sea urchins. Places where seals were hunted had kelp forests die out and all that left are sea urchins.. all the species that rely on kelp are gone. The sea urchins are still there and dominant ... they're not going anywhere, so they're not managing their population naturally.
I believe we know this for sure due to the Yellowstone park experience with wolves, when they were reintroduced the elk population declined and spread more widely and the flora improved.
As far as I know, this is not very secret, but not fully studied either.
There are various kinds of flying insects other than bees that are key pollinators.
In avocados I believe there is still quite a bit of research to do about A type and B type flowers and pollinator insects. The current knowledge is that the flower opens as type A and then closes and reopens later as type B. The one type pollinates the other type. Some varieties will have type B during the day, allowing immediate cross polination between that tree and the other variety with the type A open at that time.
Now, the part where I say research is lacking: As general advice in farming circles, people currently tend to use a B type cross pollinator (a second cultivar in about 1/20 trees) for a A type tree. However, there are cases of monocultivar orchards with very high yields that don't have the cross pollinators. So, if the tree opens at night as type B, it means there is something that is active at night that pollinates the trees (I'll give you a hint, bees sleep at night)...
I've tried to summarise something that is a bit more complicated, so I hope it makes sense. Another thing you'll point out is that the insect that's active at night would also need to be active during the day if it's pollinating with pollen from earlier the same day. Otherwise you'll still need some access to a type A flower at night. In any case, my main point is that studying the night phase of the flowers is something that I don't know a lot of farmers are doing. For example, it's common to use bee hives for better pollination, and that presupposes that the farmer is not particularly aiming for night time pollination.
Silly nitpick: I just checked the terminology, and the correct way is to say type A female and type A male; and then to say type B female and type B male. So, that means that male pollen still pollinates female, but rather your variety is type A or type B. Sorry for that error in the explanation.
It's not particularly new, this is just some new work on how extensive moth pollination can be. Bees are most definitely not the only or "most important" pollinators. In an economic sense for the US the most important pollinator is technically the wind because we grow corn, and lots of plants are only pollinated by specific moths/flies/wasps. And the European honeybee in particular (the one we keep worrying about with colony collapse and everything) isn't even native to the US. Even among pollinator requiring crops, those things classically seen as being the domain of the bee, as much as 39% of flower visits are non-bee pollinators. [0]
Bees (other than bumble bees) are not native to North or South America. I would guess that bumble bees, moths, hummingbirds and butterflies did most of the pollination before Europeans Arrived.
There are even moths that mimic hummingbirds[1]. First time I saw one, I thought it was a hummingbird.
And there are hundreds of species of just bumblebees.
And mason bees
Hoverflies were the big surprise for me. They employ mimicry to be mistaken for bees (or occasionally hornets), but they are also important pollinators.
One of the moths related to the genus you linked that is also really cool to see fly and pollinate is the five spotted hawk moth. Unfortunately, as cool as these moths are to watch fly since they really can make you think they're some sort of hummingbird, their larvae are among every gardeners worst nightmares: the tomato hornworm. These can defoliate a whole tomato plant in just a few days, it's insane how much they eat, and how reviled the larvae are as pests compared to how cool the adults are.
An orchid species exists that has a 25-25 cm long flower spur (the comet orchid), and 19th century botanists were puzzled as to how it could be pollinated in the wild. Darwin speculated that an insect with a long proboscis would be found to exist and researchers soon discovered the Sphinx Moth. [0]
of course, lots of insects pollinate, including mosquitos.
It reminds me of when someone said if the honey bees die, all plants will die. and I was like ... you realize that honey bees came to north America with the European settlers right? and they were like ok? They still didnt get it.
Not wanting the death of honeybees, but here are other pollinators out there.
I visited south east Ohio last weekend to a house in the country. There were no mayflys, mosquitos, moths, crickets, grasshoppers, butterflys, ants, bees. Nothing. I could hear some chickadees but not many other bird songs. It has been unseasonably cold in may this year in Ohio.
It started with what we might think of as traditional predators that feed on other species to keep them from getting out of control. Bass in a river would keep minnows from devouring all the plants.
But it went even farther than that where a traditional large predator's absence might lead to an ant population getting out of control and changing the growth (or lack of it) of an ecosystem.
Other situations where even just predators not scaring deer enough to keep them moving would result in forests floors being cleared out by deer and changing what trees grew and and eradication of entire plant species in an ecosystem and such. You wouldn't notice it at first but later on the results can be dramatic.
I suspect what we think the results of what a moth does, or any given animal might be quite a bit different than we expect.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-serengeti-rules-41dfru/2...