Modern honey bees disrupt the pollination of an ancient gymnosperm, Gnetum luofuense.

Abstract

Bees belong to modern groups of pollinators, which originated concurrently with new angiosperms (flowering plants), and might have contributed to the global gymnosperm-to-angiosperm turnover in the mid-Cretaceous (125 to 90 million years ago (Ma); Cardinal & Danforth 2013, Peris et al. 2017). Understanding the role that bees played in this turnover requires an exploration of angiosperm-bee associations as well as an understanding of the potential early interactions between gymnosperms and bees. Because bees are effective pollen collectors that depend on pollen for protein, and the unisexual gymnosperms produce numerous male strobili with plenty of exposed pollen, bees might have collected pollen from coexisting gymnosperm species to meet their nutritional needs (Saunders 2017). However, the gymnosperm-bee interactions from the fossil record and their ecological and evolutionary consequences, if ever exist, are still unknown.