Iâm studying the family HYDROPHYLLACEAE in my plant systematics course. MY QUESTION IS: Why are members of this plant family important to the ecosystem in which it lives?/What is their ecological importance?
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Data Set 3
An entomologist was interested in the species of insects which pollinate flowers. She selected two plant species, annual sunflowers and blue sage. In addition to the difference in color, sunflowers have a broad open flower (actually a cluster of many tiny flowers) while blue sage is a smaller, more tubular flower. She then recorded the type and number of insects which visited the flowers of each plant species. Rather than report individual species, she decided to group the insects by family and report the number of visitations by all species of the same family as a percentage of the total number of visitations. Her data is listed below.
Insect family | % of total no. of visits to sunflower | % of total no. of visits to sage |
Butterflies (Lepidoptera) | 22.3 | 46.3 |
Bees and Wasps (Hymenoptera) | 37.9 | 39.9 |
Beetles (Coleoptera) | 28.7 | 0.5 |
Flies (Diptera) | 9.8 | 12.3 |
true bugs (Hymenoptera) | 1.3 | 1 |
Total Percentage | 100 | 100 |
Hint: you might want to present this data as 2 separate graphs.
Which insect family serves as the most important pollinator both for sunflower and sage?
Which insect family has the greatest difference in visitation percentage between sunflower and sage?
Based on this data and other knowledge you have about different insects, formulate a hypothesis to explain why different types of insects visit flowers at different frequencies.