This vine's flowers impersonate figs to fool a wasp
Kidyoo A, Kidyoo M, McKey D, Kjellberg F, MacGowan I, Rasplus JY, Hossaert-McKey M, Ekkaphan P, Suwanchaikasem P, Buatois B, Disney RHL, Blatrix R, Proffit M.
Plant Signaling
Next time you spot a vine with odd globe-shaped flowers in a tropical greenhouse or garden, you're looking at a plant that may be running an elaborate scam on an insect that never even needed to be involved.
Scientists found a vine called Heterostemma ficoides whose flowers are shaped and scented just like fig fruits, which normally rely on a very specific wasp for pollination. A tiny fly falls for the fig look-alike and does the actual pollinating while also successfully raising its young inside the flower, but the fig wasp gets duped into visiting and can't complete its life cycle there. It's the first known case of a plant faking one insect's breeding site while genuinely rewarding a totally different one.
Key Findings
Heterostemma ficoides produces globose closed flowers that visually and chemically mimic Ficus heterophylla figs, attracting the fig's specific pollinator wasp (Kradibia sp.)
A Megaselia fly, not the mimicked wasp, is the primary pollinator and successfully completes its full breeding cycle inside the flowers
Floral volatile compounds of H. ficoides closely resemble those of the real fig and experimentally attracted the Kradibia wasp, which nonetheless failed to reproduce in the flowers
chevron_right Technical Summary
A vine in the milkweed family evolved flowers that look and smell like fig fruits, tricking a fig-pollinating wasp into visiting while a fly actually does the real pollination work and successfully breeds inside the flowers.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Fake figs, fooled fig wasps and rewarded phorid flies: brood-site mimicry and mutualism in Heterostemma ficoides (Apocynaceae).
About 900 specific fig-fig wasp interactions are distributed throughout tropical ecosystems. Despite this ubiquity, floral mimicry of figs (inflorescences of Ficus spp.; Moraceae) has never been ob...
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