The flower's eye view: New ways to look at pollination

Accurate records of floral visitors are critical for understanding plant pollinator interactions.  But pollinator visits can be fleeting and rare, so data are often limited by short observation periods or observer interference.  Here we report the use of  portable time-lapse digital video cameras to capture near-complete records of visitors to flowers over their entire bloom.  We tested the importance of long-term records by filming flowers simultaneously at multiple sites.  Our result show visitors to flowers vary (both in rates and taxa), between flowers, between sites, throughout the day and throughout the season.  These results emphasize the importance of both long-term data collection and simultaneous recording at multiple sites.