Potential Disruption of Pollination in a Sexually Deceptive Orchid by Climatic Change
由于气候变化，可怜的蜜蜂将发现一个残酷事实：它们可能找不到原来的食物了！近日，英国肯特大学的研究者发现，气候变化可能破坏蜜蜂与植物之间的关系。这项研究发现，更温暖的春天会导致蜜蜂的生命周期发生变化——让蜜蜂与靠蜜蜂授粉的植物不能同步。
这项研究由英国肯特大学与英国皇家植物园、东英格兰大学以及苏塞克斯大学合作进行，其研究结果于近日发表在了《Current Biology》期刊上。
科研人员将一种独居蜜蜂（Andrena nigroaenea）的记录与早花蜘蛛兰（Ophrys Sphegodes）的开花时间的记录以及英国气象局的气候记录进行了比较。该研究发现春天气温每上升平均1摄氏度，雄性蜜蜂在附近飞行的时间会提早9天。与此同时，雌性蜜蜂出现稍晚于雄性，接近兰花授粉时期的峰值。
该研究首次证明了由于气候变化，诱导的相关不匹配的结果将导致一种植物与其传粉者之间关系的变化，并可能带来的严重后果。
潘玉编译（引自科学网）
Abstract
Warmer springs advance many phenological events, including flowering time in plants and the flight time of insects. Pollination by insects, an ecosystem service of immense economic and conservation importance, depends on synchrony between insect activity and flowering time. If plants and their pollinators show different phenological responses to climate warming, pollination could fail. Information about the effects of warming on specific plant-insect mutualisms is difficult to obtain from complex pollination networks. In contrast, the extraordinarily specific deceptions evolved by orchids that attract a very narrow range of pollinators allow direct examination of the potential for climatic warming to disrupt synchrony. Here we show that a sexually deceptive orchid and the solitary bee on which it depends for pollination will diverge in phenology with increasing spring temperature. Male bees inadvertently pollinate the orchid flowers during pseudocopulation. Analysis of museum specimens (1893–2007) and recent field-based records (1975–2009) showed that flight date of the solitary bee Andrena nigroaenea is advanced more by higher temperatures than is flowering date in the deceptive orchid Ophrys sphegodes. Male bees emerged slightly earlier than females, which attract male copulatory attentions away from the deceptive flowers. Warming by as little as 2°C increased both the probability of male flight and the proportion of females flying in the bee population before orchid flowering; this would reduce the frequency of pseudocopulation and thus lower pollination success rate in the orchid. Our results demonstrate a significant potential for coevolved plant-pollinator relationships to be disrupted by climatic warming.
《Current Biology》DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.033
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