Not strictly related to whether bees make flowers bigger or not, there is a wonderful new web site that lists the insect visitors -- including bees, flies, beetles, and butterflies -- to several hundred flower species of the US Midwest prairies.
Early last century Charles Robertson recorded the insects on flowers in the area around Carlinville, Illinois. He published his records in 1929 in the book "Flowers and Insects." Only a few copies were printed and even fewer survive, and until now have not been accessible to most people. The study remains one of the earliest exhaustive pollinator community surveys. Now John Hilty in Illinois has compiled the floral visitation records from that book, updated taxonomic nomenclature, and posted them to a searchable web site: http://www.shout.net/~jhilty/. The work done by Robertson was an amazing resource, so I am really pleased to know it is now accessible. This web site should be a valuable resource to anyone wanting to know more about flowers and their pollinators.
If you want to read more on Robertson's work, see an article in Conservation Ecology, at http://www.consecol.org/vol5/iss1/. In this, John Marlin and Wally LaBerge discuss Robertson's work and compare his records with their own from the same region.
Matthew
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Matthew Shepherd, Pollinator Conservation Program Director
The Xerces Society
4828 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland, OR 97215, USA
Tel: 503-232 6639 Fax: 503-233 6794
Email: [log in to unmask]
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The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to protecting the diversity of life
through the conservation of invertebrates.
For information and membership details,
see our website at www.xerces.org
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