Ceropegia sandersonii Mimics Attacked Honeybees to Attract Kleptoparasitic Flies for Pollination
Ceropegia sandersonii Mimics Attacked Honeybees to Attract Kleptoparasitic Flies for Pollination
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cub.2016.07.085
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发表时间：
2016-10-24
期刊：
影响因子：
9.2
通讯作者：
Doetterl, Stefan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Heiduk, Annemarie;Brake, Irina;Doetterl, Stefan
4%到6%的植物，分布在不同的被子植物科，通过欺骗来吸引传粉者[1]。在这些系统中，化学模拟通常被用作利用动物嗅觉偏好的有效方法，以吸引它们作为传粉者[2，3]。在这里，我们报告了一种非常特殊的食物来源的化学模拟。Ceropegia sandersonii（夹竹桃科），一种具有陷阱花的欺骗性南非植物，模仿攻击蜜蜂。我们鉴定出了该虫的主要传粉者是钩寄生的钩寄生蝇科Desmometopa flies。sandersonii。众所周知，这些苍蝇以蜜蜂为食，而蜜蜂又被蜘蛛吃掉，因此我们预测这是植物化学模仿的模型。事实上，我们发现C. Sandersonii与蜜蜂在模拟攻击下释放的挥发物相当。此外，许多这些共享的化合物引起传粉Desmometopa苍蝇的触角的生理反应。香叶醇、2-庚酮、2-壬醇和（E）-2-辛烯-1-基乙酸酯4种化合物的混合物对蝇类具有高度的吸引力。结果表明，C. Sandersonii通过使用与蝇的食物源相关的挥发物，即，被攻击和/或刚被杀死的蜜蜂。C. Sandersonii在有花植物中并不常见，它引诱盗寄生蝇进入陷阱花。这项研究描述了一个新的例子，植物如何通过化学模拟成年食肉动物的食物来源来实现授粉。
Four to six percent of plants, distributed over different angiosperm families, entice pollinators by deception [1]. In these systems, chemical mimicry is often used as an efficient way to exploit the olfactory preferences of animals for the purpose of attracting them as pollinators [2,3]. Here, we report a very specific type of chemical mimicry of a food source. Ceropegia sandersonii (Apocynaceae), a deceptive South African plant with pitfall flowers, mimics attacked honeybees. We identified kleptoparasitic Desmometopa flies (Milichiidae) as the main pollinators of C. sandersonii. These flies are well known to feed on honeybees that are eaten by spiders, which we thus predicted as the model chemically mimicked by the plant. Indeed, we found that the floral scent of C. sandersonii is comparable to volatiles released from honeybees when under simulated attack. Moreover, many of these shared compounds elicited physiological responses in antennae of pollinating Desmometopa flies. A mixture of four compounds geraniol, 2-heptanone, 2-nonanol, and (E)-2-octen-1-yl acetate was highly attractive to the flies. We conclude that C. sandersonii is specialized on kleptoparasitic fly pollinators by deploying volatiles linked to the flies' food source, i.e., attacked and/or freshly killed honeybees. The blend of compounds emitted by C. sandersonii is unusual among flowering plants and lures kleptoparasitic flies into the trap flowers. This study describes a new example of how a plant can achieve pollination through chemical mimicry of the food sources of adult carnivorous animals.