of the difficulties in discerning whether insects observed on or collected from flowers are effective pollinators or merely casual and thus opportunistic visitors. Conservation status On a global (range-wide) scale, the common pawpaw (A. triloba) has a NatureServe global conservation rank of G5 (very common). The species is, however, listed for conservation concern in the northernmost parts of its range, owing to the happenstance of where governmental boundaries exist. In the United States, the species has an N5 (very common), but is considered a threatened species in New York, and an endangered species in New Jersey. In Canada, where the species is found only in portions of southern Ontario, it has a rank of N3 (vulnerable), and a NatureServe subnational conservation rank of S3 (vulnerable) in Ontario. The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has given the species a general status of "Sensitive", and its populations there are monitored. In areas in which deer populations are dense, pawpaws appear to be becoming more abundant locally, since the deer avoid them, but consume seedlings of most other woody plants. History The natural seed dispersal of the common pawpaw in North America, prior to the ice ages and lasting until roughly 10,000 years ago, occurred via the dung of certain megafauna (such as mastodons, mammoths, and giant ground sloths) until they became extinct during the Quaternary extinction event — a parallel case in North America to that of the avocado in South and Central America. After the arrival of humans and the subsequent extinction of megafauna that were distributing A. triloba, the probable distribution of these large fruit-bearing plants has been by humans. Indigenous peoples value pawpaw not only for its fruit but also for its bark. The bark has traditionally been used as a fiber source. Now that the exotic emerald ash borer beetle is destroying black ash trees (Fraxinus nigra), a basketmaker of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians in northern Michigan has begun planting pawpaw seeds on tribal lands several hundred miles north of pawpaw's historically native range. The earliest documented mention of pawpaws is in the 1541 report of the Spanish de Soto expedition, who found Native Americans east of the Mississippi River cultivating what some have identified as the pawpaw. The tree's scientific name (Asimina triloba) comes from the Powhatan word Assimina, which a Jamestown settler transcribed in 1612 as “wheat plum". The Lewis and Clark