Chapman Kathryn M, Richardson Freya J, Forster Caitlyn Y, Middleton Eliza J T, White Thomas E, Burke Paul F, Latty Tanya
School of Life and Environmental Sciences The University of Sydney Sydney New South Wales Australia.
Sydney Institute of Agriculture The University of Sydney Sydney New South Wales Australia.
Ecol Evol. 2023 Nov 20;13(11):e10687. doi: 10.1002/ece3.10687. eCollection 2023 Nov.
Flowers come in a variety of colours, shapes, sizes and odours. Flowers also differ in the quality and quantity of nutritional reward they provide to entice potential pollinators to visit. Given this diversity, generalist flower-visiting insects face the considerable challenge of deciding which flowers to feed on and which to ignore. Working with real flowers poses logistical challenges due to correlations between flower traits, maintenance costs and uncontrolled variables. Here, we overcome this challenge by designing multimodal artificial flowers that varied in visual, olfactory and reward attributes. We used artificial flowers to investigate the impact of seven floral attributes (three visual cues, two olfactory cues and two rewarding attributes) on flower visitation and species richness. We investigated how flower attributes influenced two phases of the decision-making process: the decision to land on a flower, and the decision to feed on a flower. Artificial flowers attracted 890 individual insects representing 15 morphospecies spanning seven arthropod orders. Honeybees were the most common visitors accounting for 46% of visitors. Higher visitation rates were driven by the presence of nectar, the presence of linalool, flower shape and flower colour and was negatively impacted by the presence of citral. Species richness was driven by the presence of nectar, the presence of linalool and flower colour. For hymenopterans, the probability of landing on the artificial flowers was influenced by the presence of nectar or pollen, shape and the presence of citral and/or linalool. The probability of feeding increased when flowers contained nectar. For dipterans, the probability of landing on artificial flowers increased when the flower was yellow and contained linalool. The probability of feeding increased when flowers contained pollen, nectar and linalool. Our results demonstrate the multi-attribute nature of flower preferences and highlight the usefulness of artificial flowers as tools for studying flower visitation in wild insects.
花朵有着各种各样的颜色、形状、大小和气味。花朵在为吸引潜在传粉者来访而提供的营养奖励的质量和数量上也存在差异。鉴于这种多样性，广食性访花昆虫面临着决定采食哪些花朵而忽略哪些花朵的巨大挑战。由于花朵特征、维护成本和不受控制的变量之间存在相关性，使用真实花朵进行研究存在后勤方面的挑战。在这里，我们通过设计在视觉、嗅觉和奖励属性方面各不相同的多模态人造花来克服这一挑战。我们使用人造花来研究七种花卉属性（三种视觉线索、两种嗅觉线索和两种奖励属性）对花朵访问量和物种丰富度的影响。我们研究了花卉属性如何影响决策过程的两个阶段：降落在花朵上的决策，以及采食花朵的决策。人造花吸引了890只个体昆虫，代表了来自七个节肢动物目的15个形态物种。蜜蜂是最常见的访客，占访客总数的46%。较高的访问率是由花蜜的存在、芳樟醇的存在、花朵形状和花朵颜色驱动的，而柠檬醛的存在则对其有负面影响。物种丰富度是由花蜜的存在、芳樟醇的存在和花朵颜色驱动的。对于膜翅目昆虫来说，降落在人造花上的概率受花蜜或花粉的存在、形状以及柠檬醛和/或芳樟醇的存在影响。当花朵含有花蜜时，采食的概率会增加。对于双翅目昆虫来说，当花朵为黄色且含有芳樟醇时，降落在人造花上的概率会增加。当花朵含有花粉、花蜜和芳樟醇时，采食的概率会增加。我们的结果证明了花朵偏好的多属性性质，并突出了人造花作为研究野生昆虫访花工具的有用性。
