Flower Scent of Floral Oil-Producing Lysimachia punctata as Attractant for the Oil-Bee Macropis fulvipes.

Abstract??Most flowers offer nectar and/or pollen as a reward for pollinators. However, some plants are known to produce mostly fatty oil in the flowers, instead of nectar. This oil is exclusively collected by specialized oil-bees, the pollinators of the oil-plants. Little is known about chemical communication in this pollination system, especially how the bees find their hosts. We collected the floral and vegetative scent emitted by oil-producingLysimachia punctataby dynamic headspace, and identified the compounds by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Thirty-six compounds were detected in the scent samples, several of which were flower-specific. Pentane extracts of flowers and floral oil were tested onMacropis fulvipesin a biotest. Flower and oil extracts attracted the bees, and some of the compounds identified are seldom found in the floral scent of other plants; these may have been responsible for the attraction of the bees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]