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Pollination is a hallmark of flowering plants, with animal pollinators such as bees and birds sustaining the world’s food supply – not to mention our cravings for coffee, honey and macadamia nuts. But new research raises the possibility that animal-assisted pollination may have appeared in the ocean long before plants moved ashore. The study, carried out by a research group based in France and Chile, is the first to document a species of seaweed that relies on tiny marine crustaceans speckled in pollen-like spores to reproduce. Since red algae Gracilaria gracilis evolved long before land plants appeared, the researchers say their research suggests animal-assisted pollination could have occurred about 650 million years ago in the oceans once a suitable pollinator appeared. On land in flowering plants and gymnosperms that have seeds, the male reproductive cells, or gametes, fly in the form of pollen grains, which are carried by the wind, through the water, or by surprise insects, t...

The small crustacean Idotea balthica facilitates the dispersal of male gametes and fertilization in the red alga Gracilaria gracilis. They use dense, branching red algae for cover and feed on microalgae that grow on their surface. Credit: © Wilfried Thomas @Station Biologique de Roscoff, CNRS, SU, Roscoff, France The important role of insects in pollinating flowering plants is well known, but marine animal-assisted algae fertilization has hitherto been considered non-existent. A team led by a CNRS researcher from the French-Chilean Evolutionary Biology and Ecology research unit at Roscoff Marine Station has discovered that tiny crustaceans known as idoteas contribute to the reproductive cycle of the red alga Gracilaria gracilis. The scientists’ findings were published in Science . They suggest that animal-mediated fertilization is much older than previously thought. Are marine animals involved in the reproduction cycle of algae, such as...