Weevils, long-nosed beetles, are unsung heroes of pollination
Published:13 Jun.2023 Source:Field Museum
Butterflies, bees, and even bats are celebrated as pollinators: creatures that travel from flower to flower to feed, and in the process, help fertilize the plants by spreading pollen. But some of nature's most diverse pollinators often go unnoticed, even by scientists: long-snouted beetles called weevils. A new study in the journal Peer Community in Ecology provides a deep dive into the more than 600 species of weevils, including ones whose entire life cycles are interwoven with a specific plant that they help pollinate.
"Even people who work on pollination don't usually consider weevils as one of the main pollinators, and people who work on weevils don't usually consider pollination as something relevant to the group," says Bruno de Medeiros, an assistant curator of insects at Chicago's Field Museum and the senior author of the study. "There are lots of important things that people are missing because of preconceptions."
There are about 400,000 species of beetles that scientists have identified, making them the largest group of animals in the world. And the largest group of beetles are the weevils. "There are 60,000 species of weevils that we know about, which is about the same as the number of all vertebrate animals put together," says de Medeiros. The new study is a review of hundreds of previously published descriptions of interactions between weevils and plants, to better understand their role as pollinators.