Does floral scent affect insect visitors and bacterial strains on flowers?

Using information on alpine plant species, researchers investigated how the chemistry of flowers’ scent affects not only the diversity of insect pollinators but also the communities of bacteria living on the flowers.

The study, which is published in New Phytologist, reveals that high floral scent chemodiversity—or the presence of a range of different chemical compounds—is associated with increased pollinator richness but reduced bacterial richness on flowers. The findings led the scientists to propose the “Filthy Pollinator Hypothesis.” The hypothesis rests on two ideas: that flowers with more chemically diverse scents attract a wider variety of pollinators, thereby increasing the potential for microbial transmission between plants, and that floral scent chemodiversity lessens the risks of unwanted microbial colonization by preventing the establishment of detrimental microbes while still allowing the establishment of healthy ones.

“This mechanism could provide an evolutionary explanation for the persistence of floral scent chemodiversity,” said corresponding author Maximilian Hanusch, PhD, of Marburg University, in Germany.

URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.70600

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About the Journal
New Phytologist is an international journal publishing outstanding original research in plant science and its applications. Research falls into five sections: Physiology & Development, Environment, Interaction, Evolution, and Transformative Plant Biotechnology. Topics covered range from intracellular processes through to global environmental change. New Phytologist is owned by the New Phytologist Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of plant science.

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