A nice smell
Nectar and pollen making flowers attractive for pollinators. But not only pollinators, also florivores, flower eating insects, are attracted. Researchers from Germany wondered how pollinator and florivores react to the smells that flowers emit. It turned out that both pollinators and florivores alike are recognising and are attracted by the smell bouquet the flowers emit.
Flowers emit pollinator attractive fragrances to attract pollinators. In this way those pollinators know where the flowers are that are worthwhile for a visit. At the same time flowers are also emitting smells that repel insects. Especially those insects that are eating the plant.
In their analysis the researchers analysed how pollinators and florivores react to all those fragrances that flowers emit. Standing out in their analysis of 55 related studies, was that florivores recognised more of the offered fragrances that pollinators.
Putting an impossible choice to the flower, attracting pollinators with or nice fragrance, or not
This does not mean that those recognised floral smell result in a visiting insect. There were also fragrances, like methyl salicylate that repel flower eating insects.
Showing that the recognition of those flower emitted fragrances not necessarily make the flower more attractive. Although, this analysis also shows that irrespective of the amount of recognised fragrances of the flower fragrance bouquet, recognition is often followed by visiting the flower.
Literature
Rohit Sasidharan, Robert R Junker, Elisabeth J Eilers, and Caroline Müller (2023) Floral volatiles evoke partially similar responses in both florivores and pollinators and are correlated with non-volatile reward chemicals, Annals of Botany, mcad064, https://doi.org/10.1093/aob/mcad064
Plant en Zo 