Jan 23 2025
The Pleurothallid orchids are a clade of related genera, meaning they are each other's closest relatives, they arise from a common ancestor, and they share certain morphological features. With nearly 5,000 described species, Pleurothallid orchids are among the most diverse of all orchid lineages. Mostly restricted to high elevation cloud forests in the American tropics, species often display tighly endemic distributions. In Mexico, the genera Anathallis, Lepanthes, Masdevallia, Stelis, Telipogon, and Trichosalpinx are well-represented.
Pleurothallid orchids mostly display small (often tiny) flowers that are pollinated by flies, gnats, and midges. Amazingly, it seems that the orchids engage in deceptive pollination, offering the pollinators nothing in return. Some Pleurothallid orchids engage in pseudocopulatory deception, where they look and smell like a potential mate, luring male insects. Some are food deceptive, looking or smelling like food such as mushrooms or rotting meat. Others engage in brood-site deception, where their flowers mimic places that these insects like to lay their eggs. In mimicking mates, food, or brood sites, the insects are tricked to inadvertently carry pollen from one orchid to the next.
Literature Cited
Ackerman, J.D., R.D. Phillips, R.L. Tremblay, A. Karremans, N. Reiter, C.I. Peter, D. Bogarín, O.A. Pérez-Escobar, and H. Liu. 2023. Beyond the various contrivances by which orchids are pollinated: global patterns in orchid pollination biology, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 202: 295–324 https://doi.org/10.1093/botlinnean/boac082