Part Two The Symbiotic Relationship
150 million years ago, flowering plants first appeared on Earth.
This was an extremely important event in Earth's history, because
for the first time, nutrients became concentrated into plant structures,
called fruits and vegetables. The development of fruits and vegetables
was a pre-condition for the evolution of man. Fruits and vegetables
provided mammals with the food they needed to have in order to
evolve. In other words, without bees and flowering plants, humans
may not have evolved at all.
Since their first appearance on this planet, flowering plants
and bees formed a symbiotic partnership. In other words, they developed
a relationship in which they both helped each other, in extremely
important, and mutually beneficial ways.
Pollen is the male reproductive spore of the plants. Flowers
produce pollen to fertilize other flowers. But for this to happen,
pollen must get from the flower of one plant to fertilize the flower
of another plant. How does it happen? As everyone knows, bees do
the work, depositing pollen from flower to flower. When bees visit
flowers, they fertilize them by spreading the pollen that they
collected from previous plants. This simple act, repeated over
and over again, becomes the force that re-starts the life cycle
of our planet every spring. It is the genesis of the food chain.
This is obviously an important service for the plant, but how
does the bee benefit? Bees collect pollen for food. The lifespan
of a worker bee is only 7-8 weeks. Bees accomplish a tremendous
amount of work during that short period of time, and their metabolisms
run at very high levels. Just as a racecar needs more powerful
fuel to run well and fast, bees require a high-intensity diet to
satisfy their nutritional requirements. Besides honey, which provides
calories to burn as fuel, bee pollen is all that bees eat. In the
evolutionary process, pollen that bees collect has evolved into
the richest fuel possible. Pollen provides the nutritional building
blocks needed to nurture the young and grow the population of the
hive. In the spring, when bees start to bring pollen back to the
hive, that is a signal to the Queen that she can start laying eggs.
Pollen, then, is essential nutrition for the bees. Since both the
bees and the flowers benefit, their relationship is called a symbiotic
relationship.
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The Evolution of Bee Pollen
The development of every plant and animal on the planet was shaped
by evolution. Evolution is driven by gene mutations, or genetic
accidents. Most mutations cause detrimental changes that cause
the plant or animal to die. However, on very rare occasions, beneficial
mutations occur, and these are passed on to successive generations-as
Nature selects for stronger, more optimal individuals are in popular
terms 'survival of the fittest'. Beneficial mutations allow plant
and animals to develop a competitive edge over similar plants in
the battle for reproduction and survival.
Here's an example: in the rainforest, there is a huge variety
of plants. In fact, there are so many plants that they battle each
other for space and sunlight. The trees that have evolved to grow
the tallest, and the fastest, out-compete the other trees in the
race for sunlight. They are the plants that win the battle for
survival. However, this may be temporary, because other plants
are evolving to become more competitive with the leaders. Evolution
is an on-going competition.
In much the same way that rainforest trees compete for sunlight,
flowering plants compete with each other for the bees services.
The ability of a flowering plant to attract bees translates directly
into their reproductive success. If bees give a greater share of
attention to a certain species of plant, then that plant will propagate
more and will become the dominant plant in the area. While bees
collect pollen from all types of plants, they show preferences
for certain types of pollen. The pollen that is most attractive
to bees, naturally, is pollen that provides the best nutrients
for their health. In this plant competition, reproductive success
is driven by the ability to evolve the most nutritious pollen that
will attract the most bees. Plants with lower quality pollen are
then driven to evolve higher quality pollen in order to become
more competitive for the bees attention.
150 million years of this evolutionary pressure has driven bee
pollen to become more and more nutritionally superior. The end
product of this process of natural selection is bee pollen with
high intensity nutrition.
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