This was a fun collaboration that started a few years ago when I was postdoc in the Rader Lab. It originated with an idea I proposed one day in a lab meeting to test a common assumption about pollinators: that flies are more common pollinators than bees when it’s cold.
This is one of those anecdotal assumptions that any pollination ecologist ‘knows’ is very likely true, based on what we see in the field and what we know about relevant ecology. There are localised studies that show these patterns occur at particular times and places, but when you need a general reference to cite, there is very little evidence at the global scale to support a general pattern.
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