Meeting Abstract
The wild carrot, Daucus carota, naturally occurs in Europe, Asia and North Africa, and it has been introduced in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. The function of a dark central floret has been debated for many years. It has been suggested that it is a vestigial structure without a function, that it serves as a long or short distance signal to attract pollinators, or that it might function as a defense mechanism against herbivores. We experimentally tested the attraction of pollinators to umbels with the dark floret in D. carota in western Turkey (Canakkale). We recorded the number of insect visits to umbels with a dark central floret and umbels in which the dark central floret was removed. We also studied the effect of umbel diameter and height above ground on the attraction of pollinators to umbels with and without floret. All observations were conducted between 10:00 h and 14:00 h when insect visitation was high. The number of insect visits between umbels with and without a dark central floret were similar when they were of average diameter (10 cm) and were placed at the average inflorescence height (120 cm) of the studied population. Similarly, we did not find differences in the number of insect visits before and after the dark central floret was removed from an umbel or between umbel of small and large diameters. However, average diameter umbels with a dark central floret received more insect visits than those without it when they were placed at 81 cm above ground; no differences were observed for those umbels located at a higher height (147 cm). These results suggest that height might be a factor that influences the attractiveness of the dark central floret in the population studied.
