Floral parasites: mutualism or exploitation in pollination?

Floral rewards are essential in attracting pollinators for recurrent visits to flowers, promoting the likelihood of reproductive success in angiosperms. Pollen and nectar serve as the primary incentives in these interactions, but in rare instances, flowering plants provide brood sites for the offspring of their pollinators, thereby fostering interdependent relationships in which both partners rely on one another for reproduction. Historically, the fig (Ficus spp)-fig wasp (family Agaonidae) and yucca [Yucca spp)-yucca moth (Tegeticula and Parategeticula spp) interactions were identified as examples of such mutualisms. In these scenarios, female insect pollinators both pollinate the flowers and deposit eggs within them, resulting in a subset of the plant's seeds being sacrificed to nourish the pollinator larvae. This trade-off, however, can impose substantial costs to the plants, especially when the larvae act as seed parasites and thus undermine the mutualistic effect of pollination.