🐝 Pollination Ecology & Ecosystem Services Lab

About this simulation

Bees don't just fill jars with honey — as they forage they carry pollen from flower to flower, and when that pollen lands on another plant of the same species it can fertilise it, letting the plant set seed and fruit. This single behaviour underpins wild plant reproduction, the genetic diversity of plant populations, and every animal further up the food web that depends on those seeds, fruits and berries.

This meadow models that process directly: bees fly between flowers, and each time a bee carrying pollen from one species visits a different plant of the same species, a pollination event fires — drawn here as a golden thread — and that flower begins forming seed.

How it works

• Each bee remembers the species of the last flower it visited.
• Landing on a different plant of the same species completes a pollination event and grows a seed pod.
• Landing on a different species "wastes" that pollen load — the bee simply picks up a fresh load.
• Fewer pollinators, or lower habitat diversity, sharply reduce the fraction of flowers that ever get pollinated — a simple model of real-world pollinator decline.

Controls

• Pollinator population — how many bees are foraging in the meadow.
• Habitat diversity — how many distinct wildflower species are present.
• Wildflower density — total number of flowers scattered across the meadow.
• Pollinator decline — simulates colony collapse / habitat loss by grounding a percentage of bees.
• Show pollination network — toggles the golden threads linking cross-pollinated plants.

Did you know?

An estimated 87% of flowering plant species worldwide rely at least partly on animal pollinators, and in the UK alone, insect pollination is valued at hundreds of millions of pounds a year in crop and wild-plant services combined.