Pollination Ecology: Natural History, Perspectives and Future Directions

Pollination is one of the most important plant-animal interactions driving the joint diversification and evolution of seed plants and animals. Typically classified as a mutualistic relationship, pollination indeed can present a myriad of interactions whose outcomes are highly conditional on the costs and benefits of each partner, depending on the morphological and physiological adaptations of the interacting species and the flower resources offered. A floral visitor can act mutualistically as an effective pollinator for one plant, and antagonistically to another plant as a pollen or nectar thief, depending on the associated species in each community and time. Thus, pollination may involve facilitation, commensalism, parasitism, mutualism and a combination of these interactions sometimes in a same system that is entangled in the ecological network. In this chapter we will present a brief history of the origins and evolution of pollination, relevant current knowledge which is a key to understanding the rapid Angiosperm diversification and interactions with animals. Animal pollination will be presented considering human environmental impacts, invasive species, fragmentation and climate change. We conclude by presenting perspectives for future research.