Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY
Volume 224, Issue 12, Pages -Publisher
COMPANY BIOLOGISTS LTD
DOI: 10.1242/jeb.240861
Keywords
Behaviour; Floral Display; Multimodal cues; Learning; Bumblebees; Angiosperms; Flower; Pollination
Categories
Funding
- Natural Environment Research Council studentship within the GW4+ Doctoral Training Partnership [NE/L002434/]
- Bristol Centre for Agricultural Innovation
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/M002780/1]
- University of Bristol
- BBSRC [BB/M002780/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Floral humidity can impact pollinator behavior by attracting generalist pollinators such as bumblebees and enabling them to differentiate between rewarding and non-rewarding flowers. This additional sensory cue from floral humidity may have a more significant effect on pollinator behavior than previously thought.
Floral humidity, a region of elevated humidity in the headspace of the flower, occurs in many plant species and may add to their multimodal floral displays. So far, the ability to detect and respond to floral humidity cues has been only established for hawkmoths when they locate and extract nectar while hovering in front of some moth-pollinated flowers. To test whether floral humidity can be used by other more widespread generalist pollinators, we designed artificial flowers that presented biologically relevant levels of humidity similar to those shown by flowering plants. Bumblebees showed a spontaneous preference for flowers that produced higher floral humidity. Furthermore, learning experiments showed that bumblebees are able to use differences in floral humidity to distinguish between rewarding and non-rewarding flowers. Our results indicate that bumblebees are sensitive to different levels of floral humidity. In this way floral humidity can add to the information provided by flowers and could impact pollinator behaviour more significantly than previously thought.
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