Pollinators

The widespread death of honeybees has some farmers fretting, 'cause if honeybees disappear, who will pollinate their crops? "Almost any kind of insect you can think of." Margie Mayfield, an ecologist at The [University:School] of Queensland in Australia. "Globally speaking flies are probably the second largest group of crop pollinators. In [particular:order] a group called hoverflies, or syrphid flies. And these are these sort of large-eyed [flies:mosquitoes] that if you take a hike you sometimes see them [hovering:moving] in front of your face."Along with hoverflies, the army of under-appreciated pollinators [includes:considers] butterflies, moths, beetles, ants and wasps. Mayfield and her colleagues analyzed more than three dozen studies on pollination, covering 17 crop plants grown on five [continents:mainlands] . And they found that some of these underdog insects accounted for some 40 percent of the flower visits. Some of the crops in their review--especially tropical ones like mangoes and custard apples - did not rely on honeybees at all.