Despite the tropics harbouring tremendous diversity of species and interspecific interactions, tropical moths as pollinators remain understudied. This review synthesises the available knowledge on the role of nocturnal moths in pollination and their importance in tropical ecosystems. It identifies significant research gaps, methodological challenges, and geographical biases, offering cues for future research. Moths represent crucial pollinators for numerous tropical plants across more than 25 families. In tropical communities, plants with sphingophilous and phalaenophilous flowers account for 4% to 13%, while moth-pollinated plants represent up to 20% of species, highlighting their ecological significance. Current knowledge shows biases and constraints stemming from the challenges of nocturnal research, such as complex moth behaviour, observational difficulties, and equipment limitations in tropical areas. Future research should broaden sampling in understudied tropical ecosystems and combine advanced technologies like video recordings, AI-driven identification, and pollen metabarcoding with detailed studies of nocturnal pollinators’ effectiveness in selected pollination systems. Moreover, such studies should integrate generalised pollination systems and community-level approaches to gather comprehensive datasets on nocturnal pollinators in the tropics. Filling these gaps is critical to understanding moths’ ecological and evolutionary roles, particularly in the context of the changing climate.

Bergmann’s rule predicts a larger body size for endothermic organisms in colder environments. The contrasting results from previous studies may be due to the differences in taxonomic (intraspecific, interspecific and community) and spatial (latitudinal vs elevational) scales. We compared Bergmann’s patterns for endotherms (Aves) and ectotherms (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae) along the same 2.6 km elevational transect in the eastern Himalayas. Using a large data spanning 3,302 hawkmoths (76 morpho-species) and 15,746 birds (245 species), we compared the patterns at the intraspecific (hawkmoths only), interspecific and community scales. Hawkmoths exhibited a positive Bergmann’s pattern at the intraspecific and abundance-weighted community scale. Contrary to this, birds exhibited a strong converse Bergmann’s pattern at interspecific and community scales, both with and without abundance. Overall, our results indicate that incorporation of information on intraspecific variation and/or species relative abundances influences the results to a large extent. The multiplicity of patterns at a single location provides the opportunity to disentangle the relative contribution of individual- and species-level processes by integrating data across multiple nested taxonomic scales for the same taxa. We suggest that future studies of Bergmann’s patterns should explicitly address taxonomic and spatial scale dependency, with species relative abundance and intraspecific trait variation as essential ingredients especially at short elevational scales.

The study reported examined mechanisms of pollen transfer within the genus Lagenaria, including insect vectors in the natural and cropped field environment. The major flower visitors to Lagenaria were observed for 10 months, from June 2001 to April 2002 at five sites, namely the Botanic Garden of the National Museums of Kenya, three farmers' crop fields in Dungicha village in Kilifi District, Katitika and Wayowani villages in Kitui District and the home garden of one of the authors, in Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya. Twenty-two species of insects represented in four orders belonging to 10 families were found to be the major visitors of L. siceraria flowers. From the foraging patterns of the flower visitors, visiting frequencies and development of fruits, four groups of flower visitors comprising hawkmoths (Hippotion celerio, Agrius convolvuli), moths A–D (Noctuidae spp.), skipper butterfly (Gorgyra johnstoni) and honeybee (Apis mellifera) were considered active flower visitors. Hawkmoths were suspected to be the major pollinators of this plant in the locations surveyed.