Does the Rarity of a Flower's Scent Phenotype in a Deceptive Orchid Explain Its Pollination Success?

ABSTRACT: Floral scent, a key mediator in plant-pollinator interactions, varies not only among plant species, but also within species. In deceptive plants, it is assumed that variation in floral scents and other traits involved in pollinator attraction is maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection, i.e., rare phenotypes are more attractive to pollinators and hence, have a higher fitness than common phenotypes. So far, it is unknown whether the rarity of multivariate and/or continuous floral scent traits influences the pollination success of flowers. Here, we tested in the deceptive orchid Cypripedium calceolus, whether flowers with rarer scent bouquets within a population have a higher chance to getting pollinated than flowers with more common scents. We collected the scent of more

SUBMITTER: Braunschmid H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7772181 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature