Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Hans-Knöll Straße 8, D-07745 Jena, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2016 May 13;7:11644. doi: 10.1038/ncomms11644.
Cost efficient foraging is of especial importance for animals like hawkmoths or hummingbirds that are feeding 'on the wing', making their foraging energetically demanding. The economic decisions made by these animals have a strong influence on the plants they pollinate and floral volatiles are often guiding these decisions. Here we show that the hawkmoth Manduca sexta exhibits an innate preference for volatiles of those Nicotiana flowers, which match the length of the moth's proboscis. This preference becomes apparent already at the initial inflight encounter, with the odour plume. Free-flight respiration analyses combined with nectar calorimetry revealed a significant caloric gain per invested flight energy only for preferred-matching-flowers. Our data therefore support Darwin's initial hypothesis on the coevolution of flower length and moth proboscis. We demonstrate that this interaction is mediated by an adaptive and hardwired olfactory preference of the moth for flowers offering the highest net-energy reward.
对于像鹰蛾或蜂鸟这样“在空中觅食”的动物来说，具有成本效益的觅食尤为重要，因为这种觅食方式在能量上对它们要求很高。这些动物做出的经济决策对它们授粉的植物有很大的影响，而花香挥发物通常会引导这些决策。在这里，我们表明，蝴蝶 Manduca sexta 对与其喙长度相匹配的 Nicotiana 花的挥发物表现出先天的偏好。这种偏好甚至在最初的飞行中就显现出来了，伴随着气味羽流。自由飞行呼吸分析结合花蜜量热计分析表明，只有与偏好匹配的花朵才能显著获得每单位投入飞行能量的热量增益。因此，我们的数据支持达尔文最初关于花的长度和蝴蝶喙的共同进化的假说。我们证明，这种相互作用是由蝴蝶对提供最高净能量回报的花朵的适应性和固定的嗅觉偏好介导的。
