The University of Arizona Press
July 21, 2026
Theodore H. Fleming, author of Birds, Bats, and Blooms: The Coevolution of Vertebrate Pollinators and Their Plants, spoke as part of the Tumamoc Author Series with Elise Gordes, director of the Desert Laboratory at Tumamoc Hill.
In this Southwest Center video of the event, Fleming discusses the history of pollination and pollination ecology, focusing on insects as well as the roles of other pollinators such as hummingbirds and bats. The talk explains why pollinators and flowers exist, and discusses the context for the evolution of pollination species. The book also discusses the Sonoran Desert’s specific pollination environment.
When discussing the Sonoran Desert, Fleming says, “So we’re in a really unique kind of environment here in which there are resources, flower resources for hummingbirds and nectar feeding bats. And that’s not the case in any other desert in the world.”
The event was presented by Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, The University of Arizona Press, and The Southwest Center.
Theodore H. Fleming is a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Miami. He spent thirty-nine years in academia at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the University of Miami, teaching ecology courses and conducting research on tropical rodent populations and plant-visiting bats and their food plants in Panama, Costa Rica, Australia, Mexico, and Arizona. He lives in Tucson.
