How do firebush flower mites travel?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

August 31, 2005

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The flowers of the firebush (Hamelia patens Jacquin) are reddish-orange, small, and tubular. If pollinated, they are followed by a many-seeded berry which ripens black. The flowers are transient things opening around the middle of the night and wilting by midday.

Each flower has about twelve hours in which to shed and receive pollen for reproduction. The flower is dependent upon a pollinator to aid the short cycle. The flowers produce nectar to attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. In Costa Rica (and probably elsewhere), these pollinators are not the only creatures to desire the nectar.

Plant of the Week 08/22/2005

Firebush (Hamelia patens Jacquin)
Plant of the Week 08/22/2005

A flower mite, Proctolaelaps kirmsei, lives on and consumes the resources, nectar and pollen, of firebush flowers. During the dark hours after midnight, the tiny mites, about a half a millimeter long, consume as much as 50 percent of the pollen. Before dawn, the flowers begin producing nectar. Mites, bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds become competitors for the sugary liquid.

Mid-morning the flowers stop producing nectar. The bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds can fly to other flowers, but the mites are stuck with quickly dwindling resources. The mites either have to find another flower close by or look for transportation. One of the fastest modes is the rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl) and the mites have only a few seconds.

One or two will race up the bill of a feeding hummingbird and into the nares (nostrils). The mites ride until the hummingbird visits another firebush flower and, again, they have only seconds to disembark. The mites leave the nares and race down the bill to the flower.

Firebush flowers do not produce a scent that humans can detect. Hummingbirds are thought to have an even poorer sense of smell, but the mites know when their transportation has reached the right flower. Inside the nares, the mites are inundated with air moving into and out of the hummer's lungs and they may detect an aroma that neither humans nor hummingbirds can.

(Compiled from: "Mites and birds: diversity, parasitism, and coevolution", H. Proctor and I. Owens, Tree, vol.15, No.9, September, 2000; "Stowaways on the Hummingbird Express", R.K. Colwell, Natural History, 1985; and "The impact of nectar limitation in the shrub Hamelia patens territorial behavior in the rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl)", M.B. Neiman, Tropical Rainforest Ecology, Carleton College, MN 1998-99)

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