Pollen morphology identification within a plant community based on fluorescence and bright-field imaging with an optical microscope: a case study of an alpine meadow from the Hengduan Mountains

Pollen morphology is highly species-specific and a crucial characteristic for pollen identification. Accurate identification of pollen is essential for studies on plant classification, species evolution, and pollen transfer networks. In this study, we present methods for the extraction, measurement, and feature description of pollen collected from 135 plant species belonging to 92 genera in 36 families in an alpine meadow community in the Shangri-La region of northwest Yunnan, China. To describe the morphological characteristics of pollen, we uniquely utilized a combination of optical microscopy fluorescence and bright-field imaging and further created a comprehensive pollen image library. To prioritize the contribution values of pollen morphological features, we employed multiple factor analysis and established a given-distance pollen retrieval table for accurate and rapid identification of pollen. Overall, this study provides a valuable resource for establishing a fundamental pollen library for research on regional community pollination ecology.