Flowers, bird-pollinated

Cenozoic Tertiary 66 Myr Climate Cools. Continents nearing modern positions. Drying trend in middle of period. Radiation of birds, mammals, flowering plants, pollinating insects... 

The other strategy is to cooperate with animals that can carry pollen grains (usually inadvertently) from their sites of release to the stigma. Brightly colored flowers and those with intricate shapes usually operate in this way. Birds and insects seek nectar secreted in the throat of the flower, and encounter sticky pollen grains along the way. These hitchhike on feathers or hairs to the next flower, where they can pollinate the ovule there. There are rejection mechanisms that keep many of these flowers from pollinating themselves. 

Nearly 200000 animal species play roles in poflinating the 250 000 species of wild flowering plants on our planet [12]. Among them, about 1500 species of vertebrates such as birds (e.g. hummingbirds) and mammals (e.g. bats, lemurs) serve as pollinators [12]. However, the main pollinators are insects they include bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, beetles and so on. Bees are the most efficient and the only dependable pollinators, because they visit flowers methodically to collect nectar and pollen and do not destroy the flower or the plant in the process. 

The animals that carried out the pollen transfer of anthers to the stigma flowers are known pollinators, and can be insects like bees, bettles, flies, butterflies, wasps and moth birds -hummingbirds and parakeets and small mammals - bats, rodents, and marsupials (Malagodi-Braga, 2005). Among pollinators, animals of Insecta class are the most important, and in the order Hymenoptera you can find the major number of them. Honeybees are the most important pollinators available in the nature. 

The coevolution of plants and insects, birds and bats with respect to the pollination of flowers gave rise to the formation of special morphological features and chemical characteristics. The main reason why pollinators visit flowers is to gather nectar and pollen as nutrients which contain carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. With respect to secondary products... 

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