Bugs Carry Pollen Too: Pollination Efficiency of Plant Bug Pseudatomoscelis seriatus (Hemiptera: Miridae) Visiting Cotton Flowers

Abstract

Pollinators for the fiber crop cotton are underused despite evidence that cross-pollination can increase yields. In addition, existing research largely ignores the potential of insects other than bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophilia) to provide pollination services for cotton. We observed plant bugs, cotton fleahoppers, Pseudatomoscelis seriatus (Reuter) (Hemiptera: Miridae), visiting flowers of upland cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L. (Malvaceae) and carrying cotton pollen grains on their bodies. We hypothesized that fleahoppers might contribute to cross-pollination of cotton as they forage among flowers. To test this hypothesis, we examined P. seriatus flower visitation frequency, cotton pollen load, pollen analog dispersal, and cross-pollination capacity. We found that cotton fleahoppers visited 21% of flowers observed in our field site and that they deposited a pollen analog on 12.5% of the flowers accessible in a field cage. However, individual cotton fleahoppers are likely too small to carry enough grains to fertilize self-sterile cotton flowers, because field collected cotton fleahoppers carried approximately 25 pollen grains per insect, which is less than what is needed for cotton flowers to set fruit. Overall, we found that cotton fleahoppers were unable to stimulate cotton fruit development in self-sterile flowers. Nevertheless, we predict that cotton fleahoppers may contribute to cross-pollination of cotton within a community of pollinators, and that they may pollinate their wild host plants which have smaller or clustered flowers. We encourage researchers to continue to investigate non-bee pollinators in wild and agroecosystems.