Floral scent composition predicts bee pollination system in five butterfly bush (Buddleja, Scrophulariaceae) species.
Plant Biol (Stuttg)
; 17(1): 245-55, 2015 Jan.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-24841694
ABSTRACT
Traditionally, plant-pollinator interactions have been interpreted as pollination syndrome. However, the validity of pollination syndrome has been widely doubted in modern studies of pollination ecology. The pollination ecology of five Asian Buddleja species, B. asiatica, B. crispa, B. forrestii, B. macrostachya and B. myriantha, in the Sino-Himalayan region in Asia, flowering in different local seasons, with scented inflorescences were investigated during 2011 and 2012. These five species exhibited diverse floral traits, with narrow and long corolla tubes and concealed nectar. According to their floral morphology, larger bees and Lepidoptera were expected to be the major pollinators. However, field observations showed that only larger bees (honeybee/bumblebee) were the primary pollinators, ranging from 77.95% to 97.90% of total visits. In this study, floral scents of each species were also analysed using coupled gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Although the five Buddleja species emitted differentiated floral scent compositions, our results showed that floral scents of the five species are dominated by substances that can serve as attractive signals to bees, including species-specific scent compounds and principal compounds with larger relative amounts. This suggests that floral scent compositions are closely associated with the principal pollinator assemblages in these five species. Therefore, we conclude that floral scent compositions rather than floral morphology traits should be used to interpret plant-pollinator interactions in these Asian Buddleja species.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Bees
/
Oils, Volatile
/
Scrophulariaceae
/
Buddleja
/
Flowers
/
Pollination
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Animals
Language:
En
Journal:
Plant Biol (Stuttg)
Journal subject:
BOTANICA
Year:
2015
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country: