How are yuccas pollinated?

In the central United States, soapweed yucca (Yucca glauca) is pollinated by a moth known as Tegeticulla yuccasella. Each spring, adult moths emerge from underground cocoons and the males and females meet up with each other on yucca plants to mate.

What do yucca moths eat?

Caterpillars feed on yucca seeds. Male and female yucca moths mate in the spring. Once they’ve mated, the male’s life cycle is complete, but the female must prepare to lay her eggs. A female moth visits the flowers of a yucca plant and removes pollen from the plant’s anthers.

What pollinates yucca?

The female yucca moth (Tegeticula maculata) presses a pollen mass into the central stigmatic orifice, thus pollinating the plant and insuring seed production and food for her larva. Several species of Yucca are cultivated in southern California, including the Baja California endemic Y.

What does a yucca moth look like?

The yucca moth is a non-descript, small, whitish moth that blends well with the color of the yucca blossoms where it spends most of its brief adult life. A very distinctive feature of Tegeticula is the absence of the long tongue, characteristic of most moths and butterflies.

What is the relationship between a yucca and a yucca moth?

Abstract. The relationship between yucca moths and yucca plants is an example of obligate mutualism. Many species of yucca plant can be pollinated by only one species of yucca moth, while those yucca moths use the yucca flowers as a safe space to lay their eggs.

How many yucca moths are there?

Taxonomy. Belongs to the order of Lepidoptera, insects with four wings covered with minute scales; order includes moths, butterflies and skippers. There are approximately 80 species of Prodoxidae.

What pollinates Yucca Filamentosa?

Yucca moths are the only documented pollinator of yuccas, and moth larvae feed solely on developing yucca seeds. The quality of pollination by a female moth affects larval survival because flowers receiving small amounts of pollen or self-pollen have a high abscission probability, and larvae die in abscised flowers.

What is unique about the relationship between moth and yucca plant in terms of pollination?

Both Yucca plant and the moth cannot complete their life cycles without each other. The moth deposits its eggs in the locule of the ovary and the flower in turn, gets pollinated by the moth. The larvae of the moth come out of the eggs as the seeds start developing.

Do yucca plants produce pollen?

Then she collects a ball of pollen from other flowers and places this pollen ball in a special depression in the stigma of the flower, to ensure that the flower is fertilised (image 3). This pollination system is so precise that only yucca moths can pollinate these plants.

Are yucca moths related to Tegeticula?

This is still the case with a number of close relatives of Tegeticula, members of the Prodoxidae family. The yucca moth is a non-descript, small, whitish moth that blends well with the color of the yucca blossoms where it spends most of its brief adult life.

The yucca moth ( Tegeticula yuccasella) is a moth of the family Prodoxidae. The species can be found in North America from Texas to southern Canada . The wingspan is 18–27 mm. The forewings are wide and blunt, usually white but occasionally with more or less tan.

What are the characteristics of Tegeticula?

A very distinctive feature of Tegeticula is the absence of the long tongue, characteristic of most moths and butterflies. Instead, it has tentacles around its mouth that serve a very important function and make possible its job as a pollinator.

Are there parallel species radiations in the yucca moth?

“Patterns of Speciation in the Yucca Moths: Parallel Species Radiations within the Tegeticula yuccasella Species Complex.” Systematic Biology 55 (3): 398-410. doi: 10.1080/10635150600697325