Flowers and bumblebees: an unbreakable deal

• Post by: LRPV
• September 28, 2018
• Comments off

Flowers and bumblebees have a deal (mutualism). Flowers provide food (nectar and pollen) for bumblebees. In exchange, bumblebees spread grains of pollen from flower to flower, facilitating plant reproduction. Sounds like a fair deal, doesn’t it?

But what happens when one of the parts does not comply with its “obligation” on time? What happens if plants are not flowering when bumblebees pay them a visit?  Do bumblebees just sit and wait? The answer is… no way!

Bumblebees get serious about this deal. They do not play around when plants do not provide pollen. It turns out, bumblebees can “force” plants to flower earlier when pollen is scarce. How do they do this? Simple, they get savage! They infringe damage to the plant’s leaves with their mandibles:

This, in turn, triggers a signal in the plant which accelerates flowering. Et voilà! Problem solved, no long waiting! A deal is a deal, I guess…

This amazing story was recently unraveled by Pashalidou et al. (2020) and published in Science magazine, and it leaves us wondering: to which extent are insects manipulating plant biology in ecosystems? Who is really in charge in these and other symbiotic interactions?