The forgotten pollinators – First field evidence for nectar-feeding by primarily insectivorous elephant-shrews
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pollination of plants by non-flying mammals, such as mice (Rodentia), is a rarely observed phenomenon. Previously, elephant-shrews (Macroscelidea), small African mammals looking similar to mice, but not being related to them, were believed to be purely insectivorous and occasional flower visits of elephant-shrews in captivity were interpreted as a by-product of the search for insects. Only recently it was demonstrated that under lab conditions elephant-shrews regularly lick nectar from flowers. However, field observations of flower-visiting elephant-shrews and their role as pollinators were completely missing. Here I present the first evidence for flower visits and nectar consumption for elephant-shrews in the field. With video camcorders and infrared lights I recorded Cape rock elephant-shrews (Elephantulus edwardii) beside Namaqua rock mice (Micaelamys namaquensis) visiting flowers of the Pagoda lily (Whiteheadia bifolia, Asparagaceae) under natural conditions in the Namaqualand of South Africa. With their long tongues, the elephant-shrews visited the flowers non-destructively, definitely licking nectar, but not eating insects. The footage clearly shows that the elephant-shrews’ fur around their long noses touches the pollen-sacs and the stigmas of the flowers and that the animals’ fur is being dusted with pollen. As the elephant-shrews visited several flowers of different plants, it is obvious that they transfer pollen between the plants. This observation contributes to the knowledge about the behaviour of these representatives of a unique clade of small African mammals – especially in their natural habitat. With their behavioural and anatomical uniqueness, it is not unlikely that elephant-shrews even play a role as selective force driving floral evolution. Appendices:Additional supporting information is to be found:Appendix I. With its long tongue Elephantulus edwardii licks nectar from Whiteheadia bifolia flowers, getting dusted with pollen on its nose. Infrared video.http://www.pollinationecology.org/user-files/ JPE349_Appendix1.mp4Appendix II. Micaelamys namaquensis licking nectar from Whiteheadia bifolia flowers, getting dusted with pollen on its nose. Infrared video.http://www.pollinationecology.org/user-files/JPE349_Appendix2.aviAppendix III. Micaelamys namaquensis feeding on pollen-sacs of Whiteheadia bifolia flowers. Infrared video.http://www.pollinationecology.org/user-files/JPE349_Appendix3.avi
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".