The four main orders of pollinating insects
Insects have a variety of diets, ranging from carnivores eating other animals, to phytophagous eating plants, to necrophagous eating dead bodies. Some species feed on pollen or nectar. These insects generally belong to four major orders of insect pollinators and their main characteristics are as follows.
Hymenoptera
Hymenoptera include bees, bumblebees, wasps and ants. There are 8,000 species in France. These insects are characterised by two pairs of membranous wings (absent in the workers of ants but visible in the queen and the males). The best known pollinator, the honey bee, is a hymenoptera. But this fame should not obscure the great diversity of wild bees that play a fundamental role in the reproduction of flowering plants.
Diptera
The second pair of wings of Diptera is transformed into a pair of pendulums which are flight stabilisers. We know of 8,000 species of Diptera in France, including flies, hoverflies and bombyla. Hoverflies are small flies that look like small wasps and are able to hover. Diptera feed on pollen and/or nectar with their proboscis, and probably play an important role in the pollination of small flowers, which are unattractive to large pollinators.
Coleoptera
They are insects with rigid forewings called elytra. The elytra form a carapace that protects the abdomen and the membranous hind wings. There are 10,000 species of beetles in France, many of which are floricultural. Beetles often consume the stamens and pollen of flowers and are generally not very efficient pollinators. However, it should be noted that the first known pollinating insects, 200 million years ago, were small beetles.
Lepidoptera
These are the butterflies, of which there are 5,200 species in France. The best known are the so-called "daytime" species, of which there are only 250, while all the others are the so-called "nighttime" species. Most butterfly species visit flowers from which they collect nectar with their long proboscis, which is curled up at rest.
Classification of these four orders
