Mr Ming-Kai Tan, a PhD student from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Department of Biological Sciences, is a key member of a research team which has discovered that orthopterans, such as grasshoppers and crickets, visit flowers more frequently than previously known, and they pollinate the flowers they visit.

Orthopterans like grasshoppers and crickets are widely recognised as agricultural pests as they eat and destroy food crops. However, their tropical relatives provide a valuable service to plants by serving as pollinators, according to a study led by biologists from the National University of Singapore (NUS). “When people think of pollinators, bees and butterflies are usually the first that come to mind. There are very few records of orthopterans that visit flowers, and none of the studies involve Southeast Asian orthopterans,” said Mr Ming-Kai Tan, a PhD student from the Department of Biological Sciences at the NUS Faculty of Science, who is the first author of the research paper.

Mr Tan and his colleagues conducted surveys in five Southeast Asian countri