Entomophily in Acorus calamus: implications for brood-site pollination mutualism in basal-most monocots.

Revealing the mode of pollination in extant basal angiosperms might shed light on the evolution of early angiosperms (Hu et al. 2008). Because an extant basal-most angiosperm, Amborella trichopoda, is pollinated by a diversity of arthropods, the extinct early angiosperms might have been pollination generalists (Gottsberger 2016). Other extant basal angiosperms, including Schisandraceae, are pollinated by specialized insects that use flowers as mating and larval development sites (i.e., brood-site pollination mutualism; Pellmyr and Thien 1986, Luo et al. 2017). However, the pollination biology of many lineages of extant basal angiosperms is still unknown.