Meeting Abstract
Carnivorous plants attract insects to fulfill both reproductive and nutritive functions. This can lead to a potential trade-off that can be particularly acute for pollen-limited plants, because any nutritional benefits come at the cost of consuming pollinators. One way to alleviate this pollinator-prey conflict is for flowers and traps to produce divergent scents, in order to attract and specialize on separate classes of insect prey and pollinators. We examined the North American pitcher plants (Sarraceniaceae) to explore the suite of volatile compounds produced by trapping leaves and floral organs, and to test the hypothesis that scent might play a role in mediating pollinator-prey conflict. Volatiles from each pitcher plant species were captured using a combination of dynamic headspace sampling and solid phase microextraction (SPME), and analyzed using coupled gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GCMS). Floral scents in the Sarraceniaceae were rich in mono- and sesquiterpenes, some of which were highly conserved across the family. Trapping leaves were also highly scented, and consistent with flower mimicry, traps produced a number of floral-typical odors. Nevertheless, relative proportions of odor compounds could be quite distinct across traps and flowers, and as were total volatile emissions. These results have implications for understanding the role of scent in mediating complex plant-insect interactions.
