March 2011 Editor's Choice: To bee...

Hi there,

I really enjoyed the paper 'How many flowering plants are pollinated by animals?' by Ollerton et al.  Quick and clean - not dirty.  Fun to read, really important to conservation biologists and pollination ecologists, and importantly, provides a really useful set of statistics for managers and the literature in general.  I like the way the paper was written as well with a direct and logical approach.  Theory and a need was identified then the gap in the our knowledge was filled.  Global declines in pollinators is a critical issue and this papers adds a missing piece of information, i.e. 78 to 94% of 308 006 plant species are animal-pollinated.  Great!  Also, I liked how enough complexity was included but was not overwhelming - importance of latitude.

The picture shows the endemic Canary Wallflower (Erysimum scoparium) on Tenerife with its main pollinator, a solitary bee (Anthophora alluadi).

Photo by Vikki Price.

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