Zong-Xin Ren

Kunming Institute of Botany CAS · Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia

Floral nectar production is central to plant pollination, and hence to human wellbeing. As floral nectar is essentially a solution in water of various sugars, it is likely a valuable plant resource, especially in terms of energy, with plants experiencing costs/trade‐offs associated with its production or absorption and adopting mechanisms to regula...

Since mid-1990s, concerns have increased about a human-induced "pollination crisis." Threats have been identified to animals that act as plant pollinators, plants pollinated by these animals, and consequently human well-being. Threatening processes include loss of natural habitat, climate change, pesticide use, pathogen spread, and introduced speci...

The effect of floral traits, floral rewards and plant water availability on plant-pollinator interactions are well-documented; however, empirical evidence of their impact on flowering phenology in high-elevation meadows remains scarce. In this study, we assessed three levels of flowering phenology, i.e., population-, individual- and flower-level (f...

The flower perianth has various, non-mutually exclusive functions, such as visual signalling to pollinators and protecting the reproductive organs from the elements and from florivores, but how different perianth structures and their different sides play a role in these functions is unclear. Intriguingly, in many species there is a clear colour dif...

Resources salvaged when flowers wilt on a perennial plant could promote reproduction by, in preference order, the same flowers (Hypothesis 1), adjacent flowers on the same plant (Hypothesis 2), or during the next flowering season by the same plant (Hypothesis 3). We tested the above hypotheses for Blandfordia grandiflora , a perennial species, wher...

Agricultural pesticides have historically been a critical tool in controlling pests and diseases, preventing widespread suffering and crop losses that led to catastrophes such as the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852) and the Cotton Boll Weevil Infestation (1915–1916). However, their usage has brought challenges, including resistance development, secon...

The aroeira tree (Myracrodruon urundeuva) grows in the semi-arid region of Minas Gerais, bearing flowers that yield a special honey with recognized therapeutic properties. The objective of this work was to assess the botanical origin of aroeira honey from the Vale do Jequitinhonha and to compare its chemical profile with the one of aroeira honey pr...

While floral signaling plays a central role in the reproductive success of all animal‐pollinated plants, it may also attract herbivores eager to feed on flowers. False nectaries with glossy surfaces reflecting incident light may produce signals that attract floral visitors guiding their movements to and within the flower. Whether false nectaries al...

Biological invasions threaten global biodiversity, altering landscapes, ecosystems, and mutualistic relationships like pollination. Orchids are one of the most threatened plant families, yet the impact of invasive bees on their reproduction remains poorly understood. We conduct a global literature survey on the incidence of invasive honeybees (Apis...

Pollinators provide important pollination services for crops around the world. In China, numerous studies have been conducted on pollinators within agroecosystems, yet a comprehensive review of such research remains to be completed. This study discusses the existing knowledge of pollinator diversity in Chinese agroecosystems, examines the provision...

Bumblebees are among the most abundant and important pollinators for sub-alpine and alpine flowering plant species in the Northern Hemisphere, but little is known about their adaptations to high elevations. In this article, we focused on two bumblebee species, Bombus friseanus and Bombus prshewalskyi, and their respective gut microbiota. The two sp...

Aims: Floral nectar secretions at interspecific and intraspecific levels, as well as the variation among different flowers within a plant, influence pollinator attraction. By impacting pollinator visitation patterns, these factors consequently influence pollination effectiveness and plant reproductive success. However, our understanding of the vari...

Ethnopharmacological relevance The Yi people in the Xiaoliangshan region in southwest China have a unique practice of combining ritual treatment and traditional medicine to care for patients. Despite increasing urbanization in the area, they have managed to preserve their distinctive lifestyle and extensive knowledge of traditional medicinal plants...

The alarming decline of pollinator populations has raised significant concerns worldwide and prompted the need for effective pesticide risk assessment within the Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management (IPPM) framework. This paper examines the diverse approaches to pollinator protection within the pesticide regulatory environments of the United S...

The mountain bumblebees of the subgenus Alpigenobombus Skorikov, 1914, are uniquely distinctive because the females have enlarged mandibles with six large, evenly spaced teeth, which they use to bite holes in long-corolla flowers for nectar robbing. Recognition of species in this subgenus has been uncertain, with names used in various combinations....

Background As the male and female gametophytes of flowering plants, pollen and ovules largely determine the upper and lower boundaries of plant reproductive success. It is commonly predicted that pollen and ovule number per flower should increase, and pollen-ovule ratio (P/O) per flower should decrease with increasing elevation in response to a mor...

The challenges of bee research in Asia are unique and severe, reflecting different cultures, landscapes, and faunas. Strategies and frameworks developed in North America or Europe may not prove applicable. Virtually none of these species have been assessed by the IUCN and there is a paucity of public data on even the basics of bee distribution. If...

Biological invasion is one of the leading threats to global biodiversity. Invasive species can change the structure and dynamics of landscapes, communities, and ecosystems, and even alter mutualistic relationships across species such as pollination. Orchids are one of the most threatened plant families globally and known to have established special...

Background Floral nectar is the most common reward flowers offered to pollinators. The quality and quantity of nectar produced by a plant species provide a key to understanding its interactions with pollinators and predicting rates of reproductive success. However, nectar secretion is a dynamic process with a production period accompanied or follow...

Bulbophyllum dresslerianum Z. D. Han & H. Wang (Orchidaceae), a new species from southern Yunnan, China, is described and illustrated. The new species belongs to section Tripudianthes Seidenf., sharing some vegetative and floral traits with B. dickasonii, B. kanburiense, B. rugosisepalum and B. tripudians, but differs on the basis of a suite of flo...

Corunastylis species produce some of the smallest, fly-pollinated flowers of Australian orchids to offer liquid rewards. We observed and collected pollinarium vectors of four Corunastylis species (C. filiformis, C. fimbriata, C. rufa and C. ruppii) with overlapping flowering periods during the summer-autumn months at five sites in New South Wales (...

Mixed pollination system with both diurnal and nocturnal visitors contributing to pollen transfer and seed set have been documented in many angiosperm species. The flowers of Habenaria species are usually green or white, with a long nectar secreting spur, and are usually interpreted as specialized for pollination by nocturnal moths. With a few exce...

The hypnorum-complex of bumblebees (in the genus Bombus Latreille, 1802) has been interpreted as consisting of a single widespread Old-World species, Bombus hypnorum (Linnaeus, 1758) s. lat., and its closely similar sister species in the New World, B. perplexus Cresson, 1863. We examined barcodes for evidence of species’ gene coalescents within thi...

This is an eletter to comment on Ma's letter (Science 377, 6610).

Modes of floral presentation in some angiosperms attract flies that eat and/or oviposit on seasonal fruiting bodies of fungi. Mushroom mimesis by orchid flowers has been speculated in the geoflorous, Indo-Malaysian-Australasian, genus Corybas s.l. for decades but most studies remain fragmentary and are often inconclusive. Here we report the roles o...

A problem for understanding bumblebee biogeography is that if bumblebees dispersed from Asia through North America to South America, if they are poor at long-distance dispersal with establishment over sea, and if the land bridge between North and South America was not established until c. 3Ma BP, then there is an apparent conflict with the divergen...

The sexual reproduction of seed plants involves the transfer of male gametes—in pollen—to their female gametes. In flowering plants (angiosperms), this is performed with the stigma of flowers, whereas the gymnosperms (such as conifers and cycads) produce a diversity of structures on their reproductive axes to accomplish the same task. This transfer...

A recent study by Finkelstein et al (2022) has demonstrated that a variety of flower-visiting animals have a taste for salt, such that plants with sodium enriched nectar received more visits and were visited by more animal species compared with control plants. They further suggest that plants could thus attract pollinators through relatively high l...

Taxonomy plays an important role in understanding the origin, evolution, and ecological functionality of biodiversity. There are large number of unknown species yet to be described by taxonomists, which together with their ecosystem services cannot be effectively protected prior to description. Despite this, taxonomy has been increasingly underrat...

Comparison and quantification of multiple pre- and post-pollination barriers to interspecific hybridization are important to understand the factors promoting reproductive isolation. Such isolating factors have been studied recently in many flowering plant species which seek after the general roles and relative strengths of different pre- and post-p...

In this popular article, two authors, Peter Bernhardt and Zong-Xin Ren will take you to a mushroom tour in Yunnan, southwestern China. Peter Bernhardt is a research associate of the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanic Garden of Melbourne. He is an adjunct professor at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia and coeditor/coauthor of...

The managed bumblebee Bombus terrestris L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) has become established on multiple continents and various islands globally, potentially impacting fauna and flora alike. Its introduction could prove especially problematic in Asia, where bumblebee biodiversity is the highest worldwide. Here, we report the active, unregulated commerci...

The field of bioaesthetics seeks to understand how modern humans may have first developed art appreciation and is informed by considering a broad range of fields including painting, sculpture, music and the built environment. In recent times there has been a diverse range of art and communication media representing bees, and such work is often link...

Background: Flowers are one of the important microhabitats promoting beetle diversity, but little is known about variation in the diversity of these insects at higher elevations. We do not know how divergent habitats influence the distribution of beetles among montane flora. Methods: We sampled beetles systematically in angiosperm flowers at 12 sit...

Morphological trait‐matching and species abundance are thought to be the main factors affecting the frequency and strength of mutualistic interactions. However, the relative importance of trait‐matching and species abundance in shaping species interactions across environmental gradients remains poorly understood, especially for plant–insect mutuali...

Successful pollination in animal-pollinated plants depends on the temporal overlap between flower presentation and pollinator foraging activity. Variation in the temporal dimension of plant-pollinator networks has been investigated intensely across flowering seasons. However, over the course of a day, the dynamics of plant-pollinator interactions m...

Species interactions, such as those between plants and pollinators, are known to be shaped by both evolutionary history and ecological factors. However, little is known about how multiple factors (e.g. phylogeny, phenology, abundance and functional traits) interactively affect interaction patterns. Using a plant–bumblebee network comprising 2,428 i...

The evolution of floral traits in animal-pollinated plants involves the interaction between flowers as signal senders and pollinators as signal receivers. Flower colors are very diverse, effect pollinator attraction and flower foraging behavior, and are hypothesized to be shaped through pollinator-mediated selection. However, most of our current un...

Background Bumblebees are essential pollinators in many ecosystems. To maintain such ecosystem functions, bumblebee diversity remains an important concern. We measured abundance and diversity of bumblebee species along an elevational gradient over three flowering seasons. We hypothesized that co-occurring bumblebees partition niches over time and s...

For plant species relying on animal pollination for reproduction, their spatial distribution is influenced by the geographical distribution of their pollinators. Predicting the impact of future climate change on the geographical distribution of plant and its pollinator has important significance for biodiversity conservation. In this study, we cond...

Pollinating species are in decline globally, with land use an important driver. However, most of the evidence on which these claims are made is patchy, based on studies with low taxonomic and geographic representativeness. Here, we model the effect of land-use type and intensity on global pollinator biodiversity, using a local-scale database coveri...

The impact of global climate change on ecosystems is a pressing and severe challenge to society. Climate change, with its increase in extreme climate events, has a direct impact on ecosystem productivity and service functions. Recently, research has focused on the effects increasing temperatures have on plant-pollinator. These expanding studies cen...

Anthropogenic activity can modify the distribution of species abundance in a community leading to the appearance of new dominant species. While many studies report that an alien plant species which becomes increasingly dominant can change species composition, plant–pollinator network structure and the reproductive output of native plant species, mu...

Habenaria is one of the largest terrestrial genera in the family Orchidaceae. Most field studies on Habenaria species with greenish–white and nocturnal scented flowers are pollinated by nocturnal hawkmoths and settling moths. However, H. rhodocheila presents reddish flowers lacking a detectable scent and fails to fit the moth pollination syndrome....

Species are often presumed to be apparent in nature, but in practice they may be difficult to recognise, especially when viewed across continents rather than within a single site. Coalescent-based Poisson-tree-process (PTP) models applied to fast-evolving genes promise one quantitative criterion for recognising species, complete with the estimates...

Plants invest floral resources, including nectar and pigment, with likely consequent reproductive costs. We hypothesized that plants, whose flowers abscise with age, reabsorb nectar and pigment before abscission. This was tested with flowers of Rhododendron decorum, which has large, conspicuous white flowers that increasingly abscise corollas as fl...

We compared suites of inflorescence and floral traits of six taxa in the genus Corunastylis. Liquid rewards were not detected at the bases of labellum calluses in three species. Instead, glabrous auricle lobes containing variable numbers of raphides secreted droplets. Scent analyses identified seven compounds in three species, with five for C. rupp...

Under noiseless experimental conditions, sugar concentration of secreted floral nectar may increase after flower exposure to nearby sounds of pollinator flight (Veits et al. 2019). However, we reject the argument that this represents adaptive plant behaviour, and consider that the appealing analogy between a flower and human ear is unjustified.

Nectar is the most common floral reward for flower-visiting flies, bees, bats and birds. Many flowers hide nectar in the floral tube and preclude sensing of nectar by flower-visitors from a distance. Even in those flowers that offer easily accessible nectar, the nectaries are mostly inconspicuous to the human eye and the amount of nectar is sparse....

About one‐third of orchid species are thought to offer no floral reward and therefore to attract pollinators through deception. Statements of this idea are common in the botanical literature, but the empirical basis of the estimate is rarely mentioned. We traced citation pathways for the one‐third estimate in a sample of the literature and found th...

Hand-pollination experiments followed by epifluorescence microscopy of pistils of Uvularia grandiflora Smith (Colchicaceae) indicated a trend toward late-acting self-incompatibility. Pollen tube growth in pistil tissue of bagged but unmanipulated flowers (mechanical self-pollination) was insignificant. As each pistil produces three stigmatic lobes,...

The Three Rivers Region of China is an UNESCO recognized World Heritage Site and a hotspot for biodiversity. The Himalayan region is an extremely heterogeneous landscape with layers of mountains creating a diversity of niches that are highly suitable for speciation events. Despite this biodiversity, the region is relatively understudied and has not...

Flowers have developed different strategies to attract pollinators through visual or olfactory signals. Most flowers offer pollinators a reward (e.g. nectar and pollen) for the pollination service. However, one-third of Orchidaceae have been shown not to provide a reward. Calanthe are terrestrial orchids distributed throughout China, Nepal, Japan a...

Host sympatry provides opportunities for cross‐species disease transmission and compounded disease effects on host population and community structure. Using the Silene‐Microbotryum interaction (the castrating “anther‐smut” disease), eleven Himalayan Silene species were assessed in regions of high host diversity to ascertain levels of pathogen speci...

Background and Aims Large clades of angiosperms are often characterized by diverse interactions with pol-linators, but how these pollination systems are structured phylogenetically and biogeographically is still uncertain for most families. Apocynaceae is a clade of >5300 species with a worldwide distribution. A database representing >10 % of speci...

We compared the floral ecology and pollen-pistil interactions in Hypoxis hirsuta (L.) Coville from North America and H. aurea Loureiro from China. Both species are vernal-flowering herbs, with yellow perianths, providing pollen as their only reward. In H. hirsuta, hand self-pollinated, emasculated and bagged control flowers failed to set fruit. Whe...