22/10/2026
PERFECT FIT 🦋🦇🌿
Unlike European honeybees and other exotic insects, Australia’s native pollinators are uniquely adapted to fertilise and promote the survival of native plants.
💦While some plants require only wind or water for pollination, most need wildlife such as flying foxes, pygmy possums, birds, butterflies, hoverflies, moths or other insects to transfer pollen.
Australia’s 1,700+ native bee species are highly efficient pollinators of eucalypts, tea trees, bottle brushes and other plants in the family Myrtaceae.
🐦Birds such as honeyeaters, lorikeets and friarbirds are major pollinators of banksias and grevilleas, with nectar-rich, brightly coloured, tubular flowers.
🦇Nocturnal pollinators such as flying foxes and pygmy possums are crucial for spreading pollen and maintaining genetic diversity of eucalypts and other large-flowering plants in the families Myrtaceae and Proteaceae.
Sometimes the requirements are so specific that just one species of pollinator is the perfect fit to fertilise a single species of native plant.
The Bolwarra (Eupomatia laurina), a rainforest plant of ancient lineage, generally flowers for only one day and relies on weevils in the genus Elleschodes to pollinate its flowers.
Native figs rely on fig wasps for pollination, and each species of fig generally needs a particular species of fig wasp to pollinate the flowers which line the fig’s hollow syconium (fruiting body).
The Moreton Bay Fig (Ficus macrophylla) and the Fig Wasp (Pleistodontes froggatti) rely on each other to reproduce.
The Fig wasp forces its way into the synconium to lay its eggs and transfers pollen to the flowers.
When the larvae hatch and grow they eventually fly away to transfer pollen into other synconia.
Recent research has identified tiny Heliozelidae moths, smaller than a grain of rice, as specific pollinators of boronias in SW Western Australia. (https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2025/june/a-weird-group-of-boronias-puzzled-botanists-for-decades)
Each of a group of 15 moth species was found to pollinate just one species of boronia, collecting pollen with an intricate structure on the tip of their abdomens.
The research found that Australia is a hotspot for Heliozelidae, with hundreds of species new to science and yet to be classified.
Wildflower restoration sites, even roadside or in orchards, also attract beneficial insects which in turn benefit agricultural crops. (See https://www.greeningaustralia.org.au/protecting-winged-pollinators/)
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