A deadly flower kills the gnats that pollinate it but may help the insects’ offspring in return, which indicates that plant-pollinator relationships may be more complex than previously thought
Jack-in-the-pulpit flowers – famed for trapping and killing their pollinators – might also serve as a nursery for the insects’ eggs, revealing a more nuanced and mutually beneficial relationship that challenges existing assumptions.. But once the insect dips into the flower’s spathe in pursuit of this pungent treat, it cannot crawl out because the flower’s elongated hood interior is too waxy.
The fact that the traps could serve a dual function – as a site of pollination and as a nursery for the next generation of pollinators – is “indeed surprising”, says Suetsugu.Plus, some adult gnats do manage to escape the flower traps before it is too late, meaning the dupe isn’t “strictly lethal”, says Suetsugu. This suggests the plants are striking a balance between ensuring they get pollinated and not entirely depleting the population of pollinating gnats.
These findings suggest the relationship between jack-in-the-pulpits and their pollinators is much more complex than previously thought, and “cannot be neatly categorized as purely mutualistic or antagonistic”, says Suetsugu. The relationship might represent a phase in the plant’s evolutionary process, going from purely deceiving its pollinators to developing a mutually beneficial relationship with them. Crucially, it might suggest other plant-pollinator relationships around the world also have more to them than meets the eye.at the University of Northampton in the UK. In this specific case, only some of the insects seem to reap the benefits, so it is a mixed bag.
“The deeper we look into plant-pollinator interactions, the more surprises we see in the ability of plants to manipulate the behaviour of pollinators, or how pollinators can evolve strategies to gain resources,” says Ollerton.
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