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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the nature-at-work dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A doctoral researcher at the University of Bayreuth has discovered an unusually cunning imitation strategy in the plant kingdom.

Many flowering plants attract insects which pollinate their flowers. This is only in this way that they can ensure the survival of their species. A twiner native to southern Africa, SandersonĀ“s parachute flower (Ceropegia sandersonii), has a particularly cunning strategy for attracting flies for pollination. Its way of ensuring pollination is a complicated ploy involving fraud and imprisonment. These "crimes" in the plant kingdom have now been exposed by Annemarie Heiduk, a doctoral researcher in biology at the University of Bayreuth. Scientists from Bayreuth, Salzburg, Bielefeld, Darmstadt, London, and Pietermaritzburg helped her gather the evidence. The international team has now presented its research findings in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.

The victims of this scam are freeloader flies of the genus Desmometopa. To attract such flies, the parachute flowfers produce a complex fragrance that is irresistible to these two millimetre large insects. The reason is that Desmometopa flies always have a healthy appetite for honeybees. However, they don't hunt down the prey themselves. It is rather spiders and insect predators that attack and kill the honeybees. The flies are then able to detect the prey within a few seconds and feast on the fluid leaking from their bodies while the predators are eating them. They thus steal food from the predators. For this reason, biologists also refer to the flies as kleptoparasites.

A mixture of substances emitted from the glands of the struggling or dying bees helps the flies to find their favourite prey. "These substances (we also refer to them as 'alarm pheromones'), which are released in moments of great distress, have a scent that is as about as appetizing to the flies as the aroma of a Sunday roast is to humans," explains Annemarie Heiduk. The Bayreuth scientist has demonstrated that the parachute flowers produce no fewer than 33 substances that are also emitted by honeybees that have been fatally attacked. Together, these substances produce a floral scent so deceptively similar that it tricks the flies with nearly perfect chemical mimicry. To the surprise of the flies, instead of enjoying a feast, they plunge into the plant's pitfall flowers.

The Desmometopa flies, notorious food thieves, have now been doubly deceived: not only do they find no dying bees, they do not even find any nectar or other substances produced by flowers (e.g. pollen). The flowers of Ceropegia contain absolutely nothing for the flies to eat. They are known as "deceptive flowers," allowing themselves to be pollinated by the insects they attract without rewarding them with food. In addition to this trick, there is also the ensuing imprisonment, as the plants trap the flies in their flowers for around 24 hours. This ensures that the flies -- searching for both food and a way out -- do all the work when it comes to pollination. As a result of this activity combined with food deprivation, the flies are quite weak when they are finally allowed to fly away. As hungry as they are, they are magically drawn to the alluring, deceptive scent of neighbouring flowers, where they end up back at square one.


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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:48PM

    by Bot (3902) on Tuesday October 18 2016, @04:48PM (#415735) Journal

    The PHB flower. All advertisement, no substance, starves his workers.

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