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AOBPreview published online on March 22, 2004
Annals of Botany, doi:10.1093/aob/mch068
© 2004 by Annals of Botany Company
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Submitted on August 13, 2003
Revised on October 2, 2003
Accepted on December 22, 2003

Does the ‘Old Bag’ Make a Good ‘Wind Bag’?: Comparison of Four Fabrics Commonly Used as Exclusion Bags in Studies of Pollination and Reproductive Biology

PAUL R. NEAL1* and GREGORY J. ANDERSON1

Affiliation of the authors: 1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Torrey Life Sciences Building, 75 North Eagleville Road, U-43, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3043, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Paul.Neal{at}UConn.edu.

• Background and Aims Fabrics used in pollination bags may exclude pollen carried by biotic vectors, but have varying degrees of permeability to wind-borne pollen. The permeability of bags to wind-borne pollen may have important consequences in studies of pollination and reproductive biology. The permeability of four fabrics commonly used in the construction of pollination bags was examined.

• Methods Deposition of wind-borne pollen on horizontally and vertically oriented microscope slides was assessed on slides enclosed in pollination bags, as well as on control slides.

• Key Results It was found that the permeability of fabrics to wind-borne pollen, as measured by deposition on both horizontally and vertically oriented slides, decreased with pore size. However, deposition on horizontal slides was always greater than on vertical slides for a given fabric; this could manifest itself as differential success of pollination of flowers in bags--dependent on flower orientation.

• Conclusions Obviously, bags with mesh size smaller than most pollen grains are impermeable to pollen. However, material for such bags is very expensive. In addition, it was also observed that bags with even moderately small pore size, such as pores (approx. 200 µm) in twisted fibre cotton muslin, offered highly significant barriers to passage of wind-borne pollen. Such bags are sufficiently effective in most large-sample-size reproductive biology studies.
Key words: Amphiboly, anemophily, pollen exclusion bag, pollination, pollination bag, pollinator exclusion bag, technique, wind pollination.


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