🐝 HOW PLANTS AND INSECTS EVOLVED TOGETHER
PAGE 1 OF 5, BEFORE THE DEAL WAS MADE
300 MILLION YEARS AGO
INSECTS AND PLANTS, BEFORE THE PARTNERSHIP
Insects and plants shared the Earth for 200 million years before flowers existed. Early insects, beetles, cockroaches, dragonflies, crawled over ferns and cycads, eating leaves, drinking moisture, accidentally carrying spores. Neither species was trying to help the other. It was a slow, accidental relationship that would take hundreds of millions of years to become one of the greatest partnerships in the history of life.
ANCIENT!
EARLY VISITORS
🪲 Beetles visited cycad cones for protein
🌿 Accidentally moved pollen between plants
🌿 Accidentally moved pollen between plants
THE LONG WAIT
⏳ Insects evolved 350 million years ago
🌸 Flowers didn't appear for another 220 million years
🌸 Flowers didn't appear for another 220 million years