The Forgotten Pollinators
Book Summary:
Without interaction between animals and flowering plants, the seeds and fruits that make up nearly eighty percent of the human diet would not exist.
In “The Forgotten Pollinators,” Stephen L. Buchmann, one of the world’s leading authorities on bees and pollination, and Gary Paul Nabhan, award-winning writer and renowned crop ecologist, explore the vital but little-appreciated relationship between plants and the animals they depend on for reproduction — bees, beetles, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, bats, and countless other animals, some widely recognized and other almost unknown.Scenes from around the globe — examining island flora and fauna on the Galapagos, counting bees in the Panamanian rain forest, witnessing an ancient honey-hunting ritual in Malaysia — bring to life the hidden relationships between plants and animals, and demonstrate the ways in which human society affects and is affected by those relationships.
Buchmann and Nabhan combine vignettes from the field with expository discussions of ecology, botany, and crop science to present a lively and fascinating account of the ecological and cultural context of plant-pollinator relationships. More than any other natural process, plant-pollinator relationships offer vivid examples of the connections between endangered species and threatened habitats. The authors explain how human-induced changes in pollinator populations — caused by overuse of chemical pesticides, unbridled development, and conversion of natural areas into monocultural cropland-can have a ripple effect on disparate species, ultimately leading to a “cascade of linked extinctions.”
Book Excerpts:
Malaysia’s rainforest at two o’clock in the morning was, for most of us, unlike anything we had ever seen before. We were surrounded by a dense stand of thin, straight-trunked, smooth- barked trees known as dipterocarps, . . . .And yet, there was something stranger still about the rainforest on this particular night: an ancient honey-harvesting ritual had begun, one that would be accompanied by an incredible pyrotechnic display. We stood not far from an enormous Tualang tree, waiting to witness an astonishing shower of sparks raining down from smoldering torches held ninety feet above us. Somewhere high in the Tualang canopy, a seventy year-old Malay honey-hunter and his sixteen year old grandson were readying their gear to gather honey from giant Asian bee colonies. On the ground below them, three singers chanted ancient prayers integral to the Tualang honey-hunting ritual . . . . . . read more here….
