This chapter examines a variety of rewards that can be obtained by pollinators from flower visits, including oils, waxes, scents, and resins and gums. Fatty oils as an offering in flowers are now known from at least eighty genera across several families and from nearly 1 per cent of flowering plant species. Floral resins have been reported in occasional genera that are abundant in the tropics. The chapter also considers stigmatic exudates, which provide a good oily food source that sometimes can be the primary reward; examples of fragrance as a reward; floral tissues; and other possible nonfood rewards such as brood sites, microclimatic protection and warmth, and meeting places. Most of the rewards discussed in this chapter may be the key to some particularly fascinating pollination systems and open up possibilities for new dimensions in animal–flower interactions.
The role of plant species on runoff and soil erosion in a Mediterranean shrubland
