In foraging, ants cannot fly to flowers to take pollen directly. Instead, they collect it from places where pollen has fallen or the wind has carried pollen to. Ants commonly store liquid food in their foregut and later regurgitate it to feed their offspring in the home nest. Several species of neotropical ants, turtle ants, for example, collect pollen from leaves and store it in their bodies to later regurgitate. During this process, they produce compressed masses of pollen called pellets, "infrabuccal pellets" in turtle ants, that allow for greater efficiency in transporting pollen. After ant offspring or worker ants consume the nutrient-rich parts of the pollen from these pellets, the membranes of pollen, unable to be digested, are then discarded. Future of palynivores Palynivores and flowering plants Palynivores are essential to spreading the genes of flowering plants via the use of pollen which is the vector for genetic diversity in these plants. While wind and other natural resources can help in the process of spreading pollen, they are not specific and do not provide as direct a service as palynivores who although they eat the pollen also work to move the pollen from one plant to another thereby participating in pollination services. Over the past decade, there has been a decline in palynivore species worldwide that has had drastic consequences for flowering plants. As the palynivore population decreases, so do the pollination services they provide. This in turn lowers the reproductive success of flowering plants and causes an overall decline in the population of flowering plants and the number of species of flowering plants. Specific versus general palynivores Palynivores can generally be grouped in two categories: specific and general. Specific palynivores exhibit oligolecty, a sympathetic relationship with a specific genus or species of flowering plants, while general palynivores can pollinate a wide range of plants. Because of the specialty of certain types of palynivores such as honey bees, their life cycles have adapted to be closely correlated with the flowering periods of certain species of plants. However, when the pollination and flowering periods of these plants change because of seasonal variations caused by climate change, the palynivore life cycles are no longer in synchronization with that of the plant, thereby causing a decline in both populations. General palynivores on the other hand are adapted to consume pollen from and pollinate a wide range of different flowering plants with different