oligolecty
Syllables: oli·go·lecty/ˌɒlɪɡə(ʊ)ˈlɛkti//ˌɑləɡoʊˈlɛkti/
oligolecty noun: the preference of an insect pollinator (chiefly a bee) for pollinating only a few plant species.
Noun
oligolecty (uncountable)
- The preference of an insect pollinator (chiefly a bee) for pollinating only a few plant species.
- We have, thus, a case where different types of bees are similarly adapted to oligolecty on a certain group of plants.1944 April 10, Charles Duncan Michener, “Comparative External Morphology, Phylogeny, and a Classification of the Bees (Hymenoptera)”, in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, volume 82...
- The most likely explanation for oligolecty in bees is not different from the explanation of specificity of any organism to its habitat; in fact, oligolecty is a form of host specificity.1954 June 21, Charles Duncan Michener, “Bees of Panamá”, in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, volume 104, article 1, New York, N.Y.: American Museum of Natural History, →ISSN...
oligolecty meaning in Arabic
oligolecty in Arabic
- preference of an insect pollinator for pollinating only a few plant species
- قِلَّة الجَمْع
Examples of oligolecty in a sentence
- In so far as now known, all of the species exhibit a high degree of oligolecty (or monolecty) being restricted in pollen collecting to a single genus of plants.1955 October, E[arle] G[orton] Linsley, J[ohn] W[inslow] MacSwain, Ray F[red] Smith, “Observations on the Nesting Habits and Flower...
- An individual of a polylectic species that takes pollen from only a few kinds of plants is showing flower constancy rather than oligolecty.1974, Charles Duncan Michener, “Glossary”, in The Social Behavior of the Bees, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University...
- Once oligolecty was documented, the following two summers were used for field study of widely separated populations of I. pandurata.1978, Daniel F. Austin, “Morning Glory Bees and the Ipomoea pandurata Complex (Hymenoptera: Anthophoridae)”, in Manya B. Stoetzel, editor...
- In most studies sampling is limited to a few sites, and therefore oligolecty is dubiously assigned.2018, Favio Gerardo Vossler, “Are Stingless Bees a Broadly Polylectic Group? An Empirical Study of the Adjustments Required for an Improved...
Origin of oligolecty
Probably from oligolectic + -y (suffix forming abstract nouns denoting conditions, qualities, or states). Oligolectic is derived from English oligo- (prefix meaning ‘few’) (from Ancient Greek ὀλῐ́γος (olĭ́gos, “few, little”), from Proto-Indo-European *(o)leyg- (“indigent, poor; miserable”)) + Ancient Greek λεκτός (lektós, “chosen”) (from λέγω (légō, “to choose; to arrange; to gather”), from Proto-Indo-European *leǵ- (“to collect, gather”)) + English -ic (suffix forming adjectives meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ from nouns), possibly modelled after eclectic.
Questions about oligolecty
- What does oligolecty mean?
- Oligolecty means the preference of an insect pollinator (chiefly a bee) for pollinating only a few plant species.
- What is oligolecty in Arabic?
- Oligolecty in Arabic is قِلَّة الجَمْع. See Oligolecty meaning in Arabic.
- How do you use oligolecty in a sentence?
- In so far as now known, all of the species exhibit a high degree of oligolecty (or monolecty) being restricted in pollen collecting to a single genus of plants.
- What part of speech is oligolecty?
- Oligolecty is a noun.
- How do you pronounce oligolecty?
- Oligolecty is pronounced /ˌɒlɪɡə(ʊ)ˈlɛkti/ (UK).
Words near oligolecty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: oligolecty (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-oligolecty.wav, En-us-oligolecty.oga.
Cite this entry: “oligolecty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/oligolecty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.