Recently, the National Science Review published online the results of the team of Professor Huang Shuangquan and his collaborators from the School of Life Sciences of Central China Normal University, who found that 33 species of orchids secrete oil from the glandular hairs on the lip flaps of 41 species of orchids such as Dendrobium.
Horned talus talus bee male collects oil secretions in the lip flap of Dendrobium bouquet Photo courtesy of the interviewee
In general, plants pollinated by animals usually provide nectar or pollen as payment for their labor. Nectar is a sugar water, while pollen is rich in protein and is an essential nutrient for bee larvae.
Fifty years ago, German scientist Stefan Vogel first discovered that some flowering plants are "oil flowers" that reward pollinators with tiny droplets of oil. Females of oilbees collect flower oil with special bristles or ventral hairs, which are mixed with pollen as food for larvae, and are also used as nest liners to prevent waterproofing. Worldwide, there are about 150 genera and 11 families of oilflower plants, and there are 370 species of oilbees.
Through six years of field research in Xishuangbanna and Malipo in southern Yunnan, China, the researchers found that 33 of the 41 species of the orchid family Dendrobium and Mountain Coral belonged to the "oil flower", and these orchids were mainly used by the males of the genus Ctenophorus, while the females preferred to visit the oil flowers of the Cucurbitaceae family to collect oil, nectar and pollen. They also observed that the male C. ectocarpus was the only effective pollinator of 12 species of Dendrobium and 1 species of mountain coral orchid.
According to Zhang Meng, the first author of the paper and a doctoral student at Central China Normal University, when Dendrobium orchids were placed in an experimental population with Cucurbitaceae flowering in the wild, the number of visits to the orchids by oil bees increased by hundreds of times, indicating that the success of pollination of orchids was largely due to the homogeneous flowering of Cucurbitaceae oilflower plants.
It is known that Dendrobium is the second largest genus of the Orchid family, with about 1,500 species. "Given that the reproductive success of orchids such as Dendrobium is highly dependent on the oil bee, maintaining and restoring the orchid population requires the protection and rejuvenation of the population of Cucurbitaceae oilflower plants that bloom in the same place. Huang Shuangquan said that the multi-dimensional and reciprocal pollination system found in the study has important implications for the conservation of rare resources such as orchids: the protection of species should follow the concept of a community of life.
Hong LIU, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University in the United States, said, "Many species of Dendrobium have horticultural and medicinal properties, and a better understanding of these species will contribute to the sustainable use and conservation of these precious biological resources." This research is of great significance for biodiversity conservation. ”
Related Paper Information:
https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwae072
- Source: China Science News
- Editor: Sheng Ran
- Typesetting: Xiaotong