One decade ago, the opening statement of a ground-breaking paper could claim that the effects of predation on pollinators had been largely ignored (Dukas 2001). Since then, it has been suggested that ambush predators – mainly crab spiders, praying mantises and hemipteran bugs that wait on or under flowers for the arrival of unsuspecting pollinators – could affect the distribution patterns of plant species (Suttle 2003), the foraging decisions of pollinators (Jones 2010), the evolution of flower colours (Abbott 2010), the evolution of plant traits that attract ambush predators (Higginson, Ruxton & Skelhorn 2010), and even play a role in regulating the populations of solitary bees (Rodríguez-Gironés 2012).
