{"id":2396,"date":"2021-08-17T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/modernsciences.org\/?p=2396"},"modified":"2021-08-21T05:55:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T05:55:04","slug":"bees-eat-orchid-counterfeit-pollen-and-theyre-just-as-nutritious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/bees-eat-orchid-counterfeit-pollen-and-theyre-just-as-nutritious\/","title":{"rendered":"Bees Eat Orchid \u201cCounterfeit\u201d Pollen\u2014And They\u2019re Just As Nutritious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A nondescript orchid, Cypripedium wardii<\/em>, goes about its business inside a lush forest in Sichuan province, China. Nearby, a bee flies about, seeking its next pollen meal. Eons of evolutionary time allowed orchids like C. wardii<\/em> to fool these tiny pollinators by evolving its own \u201ccounterfeit\u201d pollen\u2014pseudopollen<\/em>, if you will\u2014to try and trick the tiny insect into aiding its own reproduction. After all, it doesn\u2019t produce nectar, nor does it produce some distinct floral fragrance that can otherwise attract pollinators such as the nearby bee. Instead, the orchid tries to fool the bee by employing pseudopollen that\u2019s indistinguishable from the real thing. Some orchids create these pollen fragments with barely any nutrients at all; others give a little more by creating pseudopollen containing lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates. The nearby bee, none the wiser, approached the orchid and dined on these counterfeit pollen particles, then went on in its merry life without much of a second thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, up until recently, scientists weren\u2019t exactly sure if these bees even get any nutrition from these pseudopollen particles at all, and the orchids were really just good at pulling a fast one on them. A recent study by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, viewable on bioRxiv, argues that the orchids don\u2019t just try to fool these bees by letting them eat their pseudopollen; the bees actually get nutrition out of these counterfeits, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the study, the researchers observed 12 species of bee and hoverfly that collected pseudopollen from C. wardii<\/em> orchids. They then collected some specimens of these insects, and brought them back to the lab for dissection. In doing so, they discovered the pseudopollen particles inside the insects\u2019 digestive tracts, with analysis of the pseudopollen showing the presence of lipids; the bees were actually being fed by eating the orchids\u2019 counterfeit pollen. According to co-author Yi-Bo Luo, this is the first time they\u2019ve confirmed that pseudopollen from these orchids are actually real rewards for the pollinators. Rodrigo Singer, an orchid pollination specialist at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, is also convinced that these bees and hoverflies aren\u2019t actually being fooled at all, and that they can actually sense the nutritional value of these pseudopollen produced by C. wardii<\/em>, hence why they\u2019re eating them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kevin Davies, a botanist at Cardiff University who\u2019s uninvolved with the study, is convinced that the work is a \u201cstep forward\u201d for the field, seeing as it\u2019s the first time scientists have been able to show that these pseudopollen isn\u2019t just \u201cfool\u2019s gold\u201d for these insects. Davies hopes that these results will encourage further studies into the pseudopollen produced by other orchids, to see which other \u201ccounterfeit\u201d pollen are actually edible for insect pollinators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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