530News

  • Home
  • Features
  • News Shorts
  • Entertainment
  • LifeStyle
    • Life on the Ark
  • Top Picks
  • Bartender
  • Inspire Health
  • Trending Topics
  • Publications
  • Contact Us
You are at :Home»Top Picks»Forming relationships
Courtesy photo Pam Martin - As bell-like yucca flowers open, their stamens and pistil are exposed, attracting the tiny yucca moth, its partner in survival. Scientists have recorded the mutually beneficial relationship between moth and plant since 1872.

Forming relationships

530news 25 May 2017 Top Picks, Trending Topics Leave a comment 142 Views

Twitter Facebook Google + Stumble linkedin Pinterest More

Pam Martin 530News – 

Courtesy photo Pam Martin – A tiny yucca moth on the stamens of a yucca flower. The yucca moth’s wings are covered with pristine white scales. The dark areas on the wings of this moth are missing scales.

Dotting Cheyenne Bottoms’ sand hills, the stately yucca plant is blooming, beginning an elaborate partnership of survival between animal and plant. Towering spikes of bell-like flowers emit a pleasant fragrance, attracting a small bright white moth, commonly named the yucca moth. Over millions of years, plant and moth formed a relationship, making each essential to the other’s survival – the moth’s young only eat yucca and no other pollinator visits the yucca’s flowers.
Seeking a male, the one-quarter-inch- long yucca moth finds a male partner on the yucca plant during the day, an exception to the rule of moths flying at night. She mates and begins the process of ensuring the survival of her young. The flower’s pollen structures, the stamens, now draw her attention. Using two tentacle-like modified mouth structures, she sets about gathering pollen from the yucca’s stamens, scraping pollen into a ball she carries beneath her head. With no eating mouth parts, she lives only a few days, her sole purpose mating and laying eggs for the next generation.
Taking flight, she searches the hillside for other yucca plant flowers, carrying her precious cargo. Not just any yucca flower is acceptable. She needs yucca blossoms that have not yet been pollinated by another yucca moth, normally a newly-opened flower. Sensing the pheromone, a chemical scent, left by other female yucca moths after they visit the flower, she searches for an untouched flower. This all important search ensures the survival of her young and the yucca’s seeds. Too many eggs laid within the flower’s ovary and the flower aborts.
Tasting the yucca blossoms with her delicate feet, she finds a virgin flower. Walking into the flower’s depth, she makes a hole in the ovary, laying 5 to ten eggs, allowing enough seed for caterpillar food and seed dispersal and germination. After marking the flower with her pheromone, she scrapes some pollen from her supply, applying it to the flower’s stigma, actively guaranteeing the flower’s pollination. The stigma is the flower’s receptacle for pollen, from which the pollen grains form a tube, allowing the pollen grain to travel to the ovary and join with an ovule to form a seed.
After repeating the whole process over a few more days, exhausting her egg supply, her life is done. Her caterpillars hatch within the yucca ovaries, eating seeds until it is time for them to pupate and form a cocoon. Dropping to the ground, they burrow into the soil where they await spring’s warm temperatures to heat the soil, prompting their emergence into adulthood.
Both species have become so specialized they rely on one another for their survival, forming a vital relationship to which both are totally devoted. Unlike the narrow-mouth toad and the Texas brown tarantula that assist each other by convenience but that’s another story for another day!

Pam Martin is an education specialist for the Kansas Department of Wildlife Parks and Tourism.

Barton Bottoms Cheyenne Flowers Nature news 2017-05-25
530news
Tags Barton Bottoms Cheyenne Flowers Nature news
Twitter Facebook Google + Stumble linkedin Pinterest More

Authors

Posted by : 530news
Previous Article :

Yes, you’re still at risk for the recent cyberattack

Next Article :

530News 05-26-2017

Related Articles

6 Tinder users to watch out for when swiping

530news 29 Nov 2016

5 ways to stay healthy during cold and flu season

530news 17 Oct 2017
Why you need to let your kids fail

Why you need to let your kids fail

530news 14 Jul 2017

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

Saving the black-footed ferret
Features

Saving the black-footed ferret

Hugo Gonzalez 04 Jan 2018
Skating on ersatz ice
Features

Skating on ersatz ice

Susan Thacker 14 Dec 2017
Holiday Cheer
Features

Holiday Cheer

530news 30 Nov 2017

530News Publications

530News 01-05-18
Publications

530News 01-05-18

Hugo Gonzalez 04 Jan 2018
530News 12-15-17
Publications

530News 12-15-17

Hugo Gonzalez 14 Dec 2017
530News 12-01-17
Publications

530News 12-01-17

Hugo Gonzalez 30 Nov 2017

  • LifeStyle
  • Entertainment
  • Top Picks
  • Trending Topics
  • Features
  • Publications

530news
530news.net news & marketing information for Great Bend (KS). Great advertising tool--reaches most area households through free print and digital options.

Contact Us

  • webmaster@gbtribune.com
  • 620-792-1211
  • 620-792-8381
  • 1211 Forest Ave., Great Bend KS.

Recent Posts

  • Have You Seen This? Baby bears find human hammock; bearpocalypse inevitable

    530news 22 Apr 2018
  • 6 essential Marvel movies to watch to prepare for ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

    530news 21 Apr 2018
  • Low-key ‘Leaning Into the Wind’ is a meandering portrait of an eccentric artist

    530news 20 Apr 2018
  • Teen brings baseball team to dying grandma’s backyard so she could watch him play one last time

    530news 19 Apr 2018

Archives

Recent Publications

530News 01-05-18
Publications

530News 01-05-18

Hugo Gonzalez 04 Jan 2018
530News 12-15-17
Publications

530News 12-15-17

Hugo Gonzalez 14 Dec 2017
530News 12-01-17
Publications

530News 12-01-17

Hugo Gonzalez 30 Nov 2017
Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved
530news.net