Here, we sampled all animals that were found on or between the stems and leaves of an orchid stand.
The orchid's fauna consisted almost entirely of web-building spiders, who can rely on self-made structures for a living, and ants, which were probably foraging workers.
The time from seed germination to the delivery of the surviving plants to the orchid galleries varied from 1 year to 18 months.
Thus, some proportion of a fruit fly population may not visit orchids if other plant species are available.
The orchids, attached to substrates, hang from the wires that support the palm-leaf roof.
The mortality rates of these nonsymbiotically propagated, epiphytic orchids during the acclimatization phase, prior to these experiments, were high, between 60 and 90%.
Unfortunately though, in the absence of specialist local knowledge, species-level identification of the orchid pollinaria is difficult.
Although only direct observation will provide a conclusive answer, we suspect that many more flies visit orchids than are subsequently caught bearing pollinaria.
