Speaker
Description
Floral scents function as both long- and short-distance cues, conveying information about a plant’s presence, identity, and resource availability. The success of plant–pollinator interactions depends critically on pollinators’ responses to these volatile organic compounds (VOCs). A central feature of floral scent is its evolutionary lability: in this tight retroaction cycle, emission of and response to floral volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the first line of change. Thus, the composition of floral scent bouquets could potentially serve as an indicator of the pollinators with which the plants interact the most.
Traditionally, studies on VOC-mediated plant–pollinator networks classify pollinators by pollination syndrome and VOCs by biosynthetic pathway. However, recent findings demonstrate that even a single compound difference between two closely related plant species can account for the difference in behavioral response of two closely related pollinator species. Moreover, phylogenetically close plant species inhabiting different ecological communities may exhibit divergent scent profiles that converge with co-flowering species sharing the same pollinators. This suggests that floral VOC composition may reflect ecological interactions more than phylogenetic history.
In this study, we aim to identify specific VOCs—or functionally relevant groups—that structure plant–pollinator interaction patterns, without relying on predefined categories for pollinators, plants, or compounds. We compiled data on floral scent composition and plant–pollinator interactions from published literature and databases. Using network-based clustering methods, we grouped pollinators and VOCs based on shared interaction patterns, enabling us to explore whether pollinator visitation is associated with particular scent profiles.
Our approach provides a data-driven framework to uncover the role of chemical signatures and pollinator olfactory sensory bias in pollination networks, with implications for community ecology, conservation of pollinators, and optimization of pollination services in agroecosystems.
