Velcro-like cells aid bee grip
8 Jun 2012 by Evoluted New Media
Flowers blowing in the wind can be difficult for pollinating insects like bees to handle, but new research has revealed bees use Velcro-like cells on the surface of petals to provide grip.
These special cells are best seen under an electron microscope, which reveals a conical structure which researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge believe helps the bees grip the petal in windy conditions.
“Many of our common garden flowers have beautiful conical cells if you look closely – roses have rounded conical petal cells while petunias have really long cells, giving petunia flowers an almost velvety appearance, particularly visible in the dark-coloured variety,” said Dr Beverley Glover, lead author of the research published in Functional Ecology.
Previous research revealed that bees prefer snapdragons with conical cells over a mutant variety with flat cells since the conical cells help the bee grip the flower. However, these flowers are quite complicated so Glover decided to focus on a simple flower, Petunia hybrida.
[caption id="attachment_28512" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Conical cells on a flower"]
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She exposed a group of bumblebee that had never seen petunias before to two types of petunia – one with conical cells and a mutant line with flat cells. She found they too preferred the conical celled flowers, unless the flowers were darker, less attractive and therefore harder to spot – in which case the bees preferred flat-celled flowers.
Researchers then simulated flowers moving in the wind with the aid of a lab shaking platform usually used to mix liquids.
“As we increased the speed of shaking, mimicking increased wind speed, the bees increased their preference for conical-celled flowers,” said Glover.
Dr Heather Whiney said that the new ways of looking at the interactions between plants and pollinators are showing ways in which plants can enhance their chances of being pollinated by helping their pollinators forage more successfully.
“Having to land on a moving surface will increase how difficult it is for bees to forage,” she said. “By giving their pollinators a surface that increases their grip, flowers are helping both their pollinators and in the long-run also themselves.”
