Palynological Study of Bee Foraged Taxa as a Tool for Taxonomic Identifications of Accurate Taxa: Plant-Insect Interactions

The research aimed to determine the pollen morphology of plants foraged by honeybees used as food sources in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan. SEM techniques were used to create the microscopic slides and to measure and describe their qualitative and quantitative features. Quantitative characteristics of pollen grains, including polar diameter, equatorial diameter, pollen type, P/E ratio, and exine thickness, were determined and analyzed statistically using the software SPSS IBM Statistics 20. A total of 20 melliferous plants were identified for the foraging preferences of Dera Ismail Khan, including Ziziphus jujuba, Saccharum spontaneum, Vachellia nilotica, Parthenium hysterophorus, Punica granatum, Solanum virginianum, Mangifera indica, Euphorbia dracunculoides, Aesculus glabra, Rosa indica, Helianthus annuus, Plantago lanceolata, Lantana camara, Euphorbia helioscopia, Convolvulus arvensis, Ricinus communis, Chenopodium album, Lysimachia arvensis, Sisymbrium irio, and Heliotropium europaeum belonging to fifteen different families. Pollen type ranged from monoporate to tricolporate, and exine pattern was noted as psilate, reticulate, scabrate, and echinate. Quantitatively, the highest value of P/E ratio was recorded in Euphorbia helioscopia as 0.87, while the lowest value was observed in Convolvulus arvensis as 0.34. The maximum exine thickness was noted in Helianthus annuus as 3.09 µm, while the minimum was noted in Euphorbia dracunculoides as 1.01 µm. The findings of this investigation help in the authentic identification of melliferous plants for the improvement of beekeeping practices and offer traditional approaches for the honeybee’s flora of the region.