The fate of pollen in two morphologically contrasting buzz-pollinated Solanum flowers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pollen transfer efficiency (PTE) and pollen deposition patterns on a pollinator’s body significantly influence plant reproductive success. However, studies on pollen fates (i.e., the destination of pollen grains after anther dehiscence) in animal-pollinated species offering pollen as the sole reward are limited. This study investigated pollen fates in two nectarless, buzz-pollinated Solanum species with contrasting floral morphology. Experimental trials were conducted involving one pollen donor and four recipient flowers of Solanum rostratum Dunal or S. dulcamara L., using captive Bombus terrestris L. as pollinators. The number of pollen grains remaining in the anthers, deposited on stigmas, placed on the pollinator, or falling to the ground was quantified. Both species produced a relatively high number of pollen grains as expected for buzz-pollinated plants. Pollen deposition curves followed exponential decay patterns, with a higher number of pollen grains deposited for S. dulcamara, and a similar rate of decline for both species. PTE was similar between species (0.86% vs. 1.00%, for S. rostratum and S. dulcamara, respectively) but these values could be 25% higher if we were to measure pollen deposition in 20 recipients rather than four as in the present study. Although both species had similar PTE values, their pollen fates differed: in S. rostratum, pollen was mainly lost to the ground, whereas in S. dulcamara, it was primarily removed by bee grooming, likely due to differences in their floral architectures. These findings suggest that species with different flower morphology could exhibit different pollen fates without impacting pollen transfer to conspecific stigmas.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 teacher head, 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".