Fig tree scents track family ties more than shared pollinators
Deng X, Liao S, Ning Y, Liu C, Yu H
Plant Signaling
If you've ever wondered how a fig tree calls in the one specific wasp species it needs to make fruit, this study shows the flower's scent recipe is written largely by evolutionary history, a reminder that the invisible chemistry above your fig branches is doing precise, ancient work.
Fig trees don't get pollinated by bees or butterflies, they rely on tiny wasps that find the right fig species by smell alone. Scientists compared the floral scents of eight closely related fig species and found that the more genetically similar two species are, the more alike their scents smell, and species that share the same wasp pollinator often (but not always) have more similar scents too. It's a clue that flower fragrance evolves as part of an ancient, tightly wound partnership between figs and their wasps.
Key Findings
Floral scent similarity declined significantly as genetic distance between fig species increased (Mantel test: r = -0.39, P = 0.041)
Species pairs sharing pollinators generally had more similar volatile organic compound profiles, though the pattern was not universal across all four pairs tested
F. auriculata and F. oligodon, which share pollinators, showed no significant difference in scent profile via PERMANOVA, while other species pairs differed significantly
chevron_right Technical Summary
Fig trees that share the same pollinating wasp species tend to smell more alike, but a bigger driver is genetic relatedness: the more closely two fig species are related, the more similar their floral scents, regardless of whether they share pollinators.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Genetic distance and pollinator sharing shape divergence in floral volatiles in closely related dioecious Ficus species.
Floral scent is central to host recognition in the fig-fig wasp mutualism, yet how scent divergence relates to pollinator sharing among closely related dioecious Ficus species remains unclear. We a...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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The fig is the edible fruit of Ficus carica, a species of tree or shrub in the flowering plant family Moraceae, native to the Mediterranean region, and to western and southern Asia. It has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world. Ficus carica is the type s...