Abstract
Pollinating insects utilise various sensory cues to identify and learn rewarding flower species. One such cue is floral temperature, created by captured sunlight or plant thermogenesis. Bumblebees, honeybees and stingless bees can distinguish flowers based on differences in overall temperature between flowers. We report here that floral temperature often differs between different parts of the flower creating a temperature structure or pattern. Temperature patterns are common, with 55% of 118 plant species thermographed, showing within-flower temperature differences greater than the 2°C difference that bees are known to be able to detect. Using differential conditioning techniques, we show that bumblebees can distinguish artificial flowers differing in temperature patterns comparable to those seen in real flowers. Thus, bumblebees are able to perceive the shape of these within-flower temperature patterns. Floral temperature patterns may therefore represent a new floral cue that could assist pollinators in the recognition and learning of rewarding flowers.
Highlights
Many flowering plants require pollen transport by animals to ensure reproductive success (Ollerton et al, 2011)
We investigate the capacity of these floral temperature patterns to function as a floral cue
Even with this spatial learning, the presence of temperature patterns improved bumblebee foraging success on the large artificial flowers. The results of both of the conditioning experiments showed that temperature pattern differences improved the ability of bumblebees to distinguish between rewarding and nonrewarding artificial flowers (Figures 3 and 4). This suggests that floral temperature patterns can function as a floral cue
Summary
Many flowering plants require pollen transport by animals to ensure reproductive success (Ollerton et al, 2011). To encourage pollinator visits flowering plants create floral displays (Raguso, 2004; Leonard et al, 2012) which produce diverse floral cues in different sensory modalities (Kevan and Lane, 1985; Bhagavan and Smith, 1997; Whitney et al, 2009; Hempel de Ibarra and Vorobyev, 2009; von Arx et al, 2012; Lawson et al, 2017b). These signals allow pollinators to find and locate flowers (Spaethe et al, 2001; Chittka and Spaethe, 2007), and allow pollinators to learn and recognise them (Heinrich, 1979; Raine and Chittka, 2008). Identifiable floral cues are critical to both plant and pollinator
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