Abstract
Insect pollination is essential to many unmanaged and agricultural systems and as such is a key element in food production. However, floral scents that pollinating insects rely on to locate host plants may be altered by atmospheric oxidants, such as ozone, potentially making these cues less attractive or unrecognizable to foraging insects and decreasing pollinator efficacy. We demonstrate that levels of tropospheric ozone commonly found in many rural areas are sufficient to disrupt the innate attraction of the tobacco hawkmoth Manduca sexta to the odor of one of its preferred flowers, Nicotiana alata. However, we further find that visual navigation together with associative learning can offset this disruption. Foraging moths that initially find an ozone-altered floral scent unattractive can target an artificial flower using visual cues and associate the ozone-altered floral blend with a nectar reward. The ability to learn ozone-altered floral odors may enable pollinators to maintain communication with their co-evolutionary partners and reduce the negative impacts that anthropogenically elevated oxidants may have on plant-pollinator systems.
Highlights
Pollination is integral to maintaining diverse and healthy ecosystems (Kevan 1999), and it strongly contributes to global food production (Klein et al 2007)
Floral scents consist of an array of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are emitted from a flower and travel downwind, forming a “scent pathway” that can lead pollinators through the landscape to their host plant
Ozone altered the emitted floral blend in three ways: it decreased the amount of several primary floral volatiles, changed relative ratios of primary floral volatile compounds, and created new “secondary” floral volatiles (Fig. 1A) resulting in a blend that differed from the unaltered one (Fig. 1B)
Summary
Pollination is integral to maintaining diverse and healthy ecosystems (Kevan 1999), and it strongly contributes to global food production (Klein et al 2007). The coevolutionary relationship between plants and their pollinators is maintained when plants emit signals that pollinating insects can detect and recognize as belonging to a host plant. These signals include visual cues, such as brightly colored flowers, and olfactory cues – i.e. floral scents (Kunze and Gumbert, 2001). Floral scents consist of an array of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are emitted from a flower and travel downwind, forming a “scent pathway” that can lead pollinators through the landscape to their host plant
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