Meso-fauna foraging on seagrass pollen may serve in marine zoophilous pollination

Abstract

We investigated meso-faunal inverte- brates visiting male and female flowers of the seagrass Thalassia testudinum at night during May to June 2009, 2011 and 2012, in Puerto Morelos reef la- goon, Mexican Caribbean. By means of video record- ings, we established that more crustaceans visited male flowers bearing pollen than those without pollen grains. Foraging on pollen was observed on several occasions. On 76 flowers, we found 252 specimens be- longing to 37 families and 57 species of crustaceans (Classes Maxillopoda, Ostracoda and Malacostraca), of which 15 were new records for the region. Annelids (mainly polychaetes) were less abundant (60 spe ci - mens) and less diverse (13 species), and they ex - hibited no obvious differences in their visits to male flowers with or without pollen. Negative consequences for seagrass reproductive success by the consumption of pollen were most likely insignificant, because the quantities of removed pollen were very small. How- ever, many crustaceans and polychaetes had pollen embedded in mucilage attached to their body parts after visiting a male flower with pollen. Thus, these invertebrates may serve as pollinators of T. testudinum when visiting female flowers.