The Flowering of Australia's Rainforests : Pollination Ecology and Plant Evolution.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1 Categorising rainforest plants -- The dawning of vascular plants, and those that are dead -- Living vascular plants -- Pollination of cycads and the dichotomy of contention -- Heat production and odour emission in cycads -- Australian conifers and their problem of pollination -- Pollen feeders of Araucariaceae -- 2 Rise of the angiosperms, and archaic vascular plants in Australia's rainforests -- Archaic Australian rainforest angiosperms -- Development of the ancestral angiosperm flower -- Chemical warfare and the evolution of flowers -- 3 Being a flower -- Influence of flower colour, fragrance and structure -- Ultraviolet light and perception of flower colours -- Floral rewards and the composition of nectar -- Heat production in angiosperms -- Flowering plants as breeding sites for pollinators -- Attraction of the comely shape: orchid flowers and barren illusion -- Flowering plants that mimic death -- Deciduousness and its benefits to pollination -- 4 Introduction to breeding systems -- Influence of breeding systems -- Apomixis and coppicing: life without sex -- Dioecy: separation as an example of obligate out-crossing -- Protogyny and protandry: segregation of sexual function -- Colour plates -- 5 Spatial and temporal structure of rainforest: general mechanisms that influence pollination and reproductive ecology -- Phenology: recurrence of the flowering phenomenon -- Length of flowering life -- Forest strata and synusiae -- 6 Australian vegetation history and its influence on plant-pollinator relationships -- Plant-pollinator interactions -- Factors affecting movement and recruitment of pollinators -- Pollination of sparsely flowering species -- Pollination of mass-flowering species -- Sharing of pollinators: the 'guild' concept.

7 Pollination and the Australian flora -- Pollination in Australian Myrtaceae -- 8 Pollination syndromes: who brings the 'flower children' in rainforest? -- Wind pollination in flowering plants and the ballistic release of pollen -- Pollen sculpture in subtropical rainforest plants: is wind pollination more common than suspected? -- General entomophily: pollination by the small and the many -- Pollination by beetles (cantharophily) -- Pollination by Diptera (myophily and sapromyophily) -- Pollination by Hymenoptera -- Pollination by wasps (sphecophily) -- Pollination by ants (myrmecophily) -- Pollination by bees (melittophily) -- Pollination by Lepidoptera (butterflies - psychophily, moths - phalaenophily) -- Pollination by miscellaneous insects and other invertebrate groups, especially thrips -- Pollination by birds (ornithophily) -- Pollination by fruit-bats, flying-foxes and blossom-bats (chiropterophily) -- Pollination by non-flying mammals -- Pollination by reptiles (saurophily) -- 9 Pollination ecology of Australian subtropical rainforests: implications for the conservation of remnant communities -- Background -- Impacts of fragmentation and conservation of remnants -- Further contributions to the dark side: fragmentation and risks to plant breeding systems -- Appendix 1. Case studies of pollination in the Australian rainforest flora -- Case 1. The forest floor: mixed hover-fly (Syrphidae) and bee pollination in Pollia crispata (adapted from Williams and Walker 2003) -- Case 2. The forest subcanopy: bee pollination and buzz-collection of pollen in the threatened Australian shrub Senna acclinis (adapted from G. Williams 1998) -- Case 3. The forest subcanopy: vertebrate-invertebrate pollinator plasticity in the Australian tropical rainforest tree Syzygium cormiflorum.

Case 4. The forest canopy: pollination of the rainforest pioneer tree Alphitonia excelsa (adapted from Williams and Adam 2001) -- Case 5. A rainforest tree nearly too far away: Grevillea robusta -- Case 6. Littoral rainforest: breeding systems and flowering periods in an endangered maritime-associated ecosystem -- Appendix 2. Large insects and their place in the scheme of things -- Pollen loads carried by large insects in Australian rainforests -- Examples of large pollen-carrying insect taxa -- Summary -- Appendix 3. Generalised pollen groups based on exine sculpture -- Appendix 4. Captions to photographs -- Appendix 5. Divisions of geologic time -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index.

An introduction to pollination ecology in Australian rainforests, especially subtropical rainforests.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2023. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.