CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The interrelations between flowers and animals have excited the imaginations of scientific luminaries for over two centuries. The fascinating and intricate ways that cement the processes of the crucially important ecosystem function of pollination in environments from those in intensively managed agriculture to those in remote wilderness transcend disciplines from biogeography to biochemistry. It is little wonder that pollination lends itself to interdisciplinary instruction and a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning. The dive rsity of flower visitors ranges from springtails to giraffes whose sensory physiology and neurobiology makes floral attributes recognizable. Flower visitors see flowers by colour and colour pattern, size, shape, and movement; they smell flowers from being close at hand or far away; they can feel the microscopic textural features on floral surfaces; sense and utilize emitted or reflected warmth; and react to the temporal presence of floral resources. The flowers advertise themselves in those sensory modalities through morphological, physical, and biochemical signals. They also provide resources such as carbohydrate fuel for locomotion (nectar), protein in pollen, oils and lipids as food, resins and gums used for nestbuilding, and perfumes to help in mating. The ways in which flower v isitors forage not only emphasiz es efficiencies in resource acquisition and expenditure through optimal foraging, they alsoinfluence the movement of pollen from plant to plant, flower to flower, in the efficiencies of pollina tion and plant mating and breeding systems. The dimensions and dynamics of pollination present a huge array of co - evolutionary patterns even in a weedy field, let alone a pristine tropic rainforest. The co - evolutionary processes involve competition amongs t plants for pollinators and amongst flower visitors for floral resources; they involve character displacements in blooming and activity times (phenology) as well as in floral characters and flower visitor anatomy. Some apparently co - evolved features, suc h as in the chemistry of nectar, remain to be experimentally explained. Then, somewhat apart from all the foregoing, are the mysteries of pollination by wind and water. Recent concerns, voiced internationally, for the value, importance and status of poll ination in natural to agricultural systems are becoming increasingly heard. How pollination contributes to functioning and sustainable ecosystems is a new area for studies on community interactions, redundancy in biodiversity, and conservation. Pollinatio n is an ancient and crucial ecosystem service and without pollination by animals, the world would be a very different place. Students taking the course , described herein, learn through both Scholar Academic (lectures) and Learner Centered (ha nds - on experie nces) activities. T h e course challenges the students? multiple intelligences that range from mathematical and logical to naturalistic.

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