Honey Bee - Flower Relationship

Insects can be classified based on their food habits, as omnivorous, carnivorous, saprophagous and phytophagous. Obligatory phytophagy of the early insects might have led to the insect-plant relationship that is interdependent and evolutionarly very significant for both the partners. Leppik (1957, 1977) and Deodikar (1961) gave detailed accounts of the synagonistic relationship between flowering plants and insects and classified the flower forms into amorphic, haplomorphic, actinomorphic, pleomorphic, stereomorphic and zygomorphic types.

Insects show evolutionarily increasing trends in their body structure, physiology, behaviour and sensory perception as they changed in their food habits from a general phytophagy to anthophagy.