Although insect pollinators such as honeybees, butterflies and moths are crucial for sustaining the productivity of global agriculture and provide essential ecosystem services 1, the origins of the ...

Among symbiotic relationships unique to land, such as between fungi and plants in the forms of lichens and mycorrhizae, the pollination of angiosperms by insects has special ecological significance.

Fossils of angiosperms first appear in the fossil record about 140 million years ago. Based on the material in which these fossils are deposited, early angiosperms must have been weedy, fast-growing ...