Sneaky Orchid Drives Wasps Wild


	Sneaky Orchid Drives Wasps Wild

chestnut501

8-8-2009 12:34 AM

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chestnut501 says:

A study in the journal Current Biology finds that an orchid mimics the alarm chemical signal of bees to attract the bees' predatory wasps, all to get the wasps to pollinate the orchids.

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8-8-2009 2:14 PM

wes50

love those eco-friendly "insecticides!"

8-8-2009 7:15 PM

AcesLucky

It's a wicked war being played out there in Nature.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/32266d0d-20ae-43c4-b096-f66dd08ca42a/395FFFA8-2CBD-4FEA-9D6B-719E2D0BEA17/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sneaky-orchid-drives-wasps-wild-09-08-06" href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sneaky-orchid-drives-wasps-wild-09-08-06" style="font-size: 11px;">www.scientificamerican.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sneaky-orchid-drives-wasps-wild-09-08-06">Orchids are botany's great mimics, all in the service of getting pollinated. 
Some have evolved to resemble female wasps to attract males. Others produce 
odors that smell like potential mates or like more attractive flowers. Now a 
study published in the journal <EM>Current</EM> <EM>Biology</EM> adds another 
form of floral fabrication to this list: an orchid that releases the exact same 
chemical compound that honeybees use to alert their hive mates. <BR></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sneaky-orchid-drives-wasps-wild-09-08-06">Why? Because the bees are the favorite food of the larvae of Vespa hornets. And 
when the orchid <EM>Dendrobium</EM> <EM>sinense</EM> sends out these false 
alarms, the hornets pounce on the petals, thinking they’ll bring a bee dinner 
home to the kids. Instead they become unwitting pollinators. <BR></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sneaky-orchid-drives-wasps-wild-09-08-06">The Vespa hornet is a big pest for commercial beekeepers. This research could 
help develop environmentally friendly, species-specific traps to control the 
Vespa population, and take the sting out of these problematic pollinators</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/395FFFA8-2CBD-4FEA-9D6B-719E2D0BEA17/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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