Results

Heliconia showed evidence of pollination by brown beetles, in all habitats, more than the other observed pollinators with a total of 42 visitations. Black beetles and hummingbirds followed, respectively, with 12 and 2 visitations. Both the mature and disturbed habitats received 22 visitations while the developed was visited 12 times, implying that the undeveloped habitats were more prone to visitation, receiving almost twice as many.

Heliconia

Costus’ most frequent apparent pollinator was the black wasp with 8 visitations. The striped wasp and hummingbird followed, respectively, with 2 and 1 visitations. As opposed to the Heliconia, the visitations were much less frequent. Additionally, the developed habitat was the most visited, with no observable visitations in the disturbed habitat. The developed habitat was visited almost twice as many times as the mature forest habitat.

Costus pulverulentus

Graphs

These results show opposing trends: Heliconia received more visits in the Mature and Disturbed habitats while the opposite was true for the Costus.

This study was extremely limited in scope, causing a reduction in the value which can be garnered from the results. Perhaps most useful for future studies would be the awareness of variables that became apparent as data was being collected and compared. For example, there seems to be some invalidity in the division of beetles and wasps into types. This step was not achievable, under the circumstances, with the hummingbirds. The visits were very quick and the observer’s knowledge of bird identification was not such that the hummingbirds could be divided into type. This begs the question: should we then be considering beetles and wasps as complete groups, as we do the hummingbirds?

The amount of time available to conduct the study was also limiting. Perhaps future research can be planned around the knowledge that the region in question has an abundance of these two species. In this way, precious time will not