Anthecology

Anthecology, or pollination biology, is the study of pollination as well as the relationships between flowers and their pollinators.Floral biology is a a bigger field that includes these studies. Most flowering plants, or angiosperms, are pollinated by animals, and especially by insects. The major flower-frequenting insect taxa include beetles, flies, wasps, bees, ants, thrips, butterflies, and moths. Insects carry out pollination when visiting flowers to obtain nectar or pollen, to prey on other species, or when pseudo-copulating with insect-mimicking flowers such as orchids. Pollination-related interactions between plants and insects are considered mutualistic, and the relationships between plants and their pollinators have likely led to increased diversity of both angiosperms and the animals that pollinate them.

Anthecology brings together many disciplines, such as botany, horticulture, entomology, and ecology.

Anthecology began as a descriptive science relying on observation, and more recently has come to rely upon quantitative and experimental studies.

By the 17th century, the sexual nature of plant reproduction was recognized following the work of Nehemiah Grew and the experiments of Rudolf Jakob Camerarius, who showed that pistillate plants need both male and female organs for reproduction. Tulips and maize were popular subjects of study during this time. In 1735, Carl Linnaeus developed a "sexual system" of the classification of seed plants. In the mid-to-late 18th century, Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter demonstrated that pollen must be transferred from stamen to stigma for reproduction to occur, and also clarified the distinction between nectar and honey.

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