Pollination Vectors
Nhu Nguyen (Sun, 11 May 2008 09:03:26 PDT)

Hi Jim,

There are different ways to approach this, but I can think of several ways
to try and show that these *Drosophila *do pollinate the plants.

The first and easiest way is to look at the pollen on these flies. Do they
belong the same species of *Trillium*? This doesn't tell you much, other
than that they carry pollen of one or multiple species.

The second thing you can do is to set up a garden experiment where you have
a single species of *Trillium *within nets that exclude all other insects.
You can have several pots placed a distant apart in this net. You will need
two sets, one set you will add flies, the other you will not (=control). See
what happens after the flowers have finished blooming. I can see many
complications with this experiment, particularly if your flies die. You
should also know if your plants are self-fertile.

After this experiment is done (or even simultaneous to this experiment), you
can ask different questions regarding the pollination biology of
*Trillium *based
on different insects, or does one species of insect pollinate many species
of *Trillium*? This approach would be simple. You just need to set up insect
traps such as a sticky trap around the *Trillium *and see what shows up. Or,
you can perch there all day and see what comes to pollinate. The problem is
that some things may not come with you sitting around.

Anyway, those are the ideas I can pull out of my head this cloudy morning.
I'm sure you can come up with other fun experiments to try. Good luck with
it.

Nhu
Berkeley, CA

On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 7:19 AM, J.E. Shields <jshields@indy.net> wrote:

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