Flowers Deceive Flies with Chemical Cocktail
花朵通过化学“鸡尾酒”诱骗蝇类授粉
The parachute flower smells like alarm pheromones of a honeybee, to attract tiny flies that feed on bees under attack.
一种植物——醉龙闻起来就像蜜蜂的报警信息素，从而吸引以受到攻击的蜜蜂为食的小型蝇类。
撰文/播音：克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)
翻译：郭鑫鹏
审校：吴非
Honeybee stings are painful. But they’re also…fragrant. “If a beekeeper gets stung by bees, it smells like banana.” Dr. Stefan D?tterl, a plant ecologist at the University of Salzburg in Austria.
被蜜蜂蛰伤会让你痛苦万分，但与此同时，你会闻到芳香味。“如果一个养蜂人被蜜蜂蛰伤，那闻起来就像香蕉，”奥地利萨尔茨堡大学植物生态学家斯蒂芬·达特博士说。
That banana scent, he says, is a compound called isoamyl acetate – also known as banana oil. It’s one of many compounds produced when a bee stings – a mix of alarm pheromones that let the hive know that another bee’s in danger.
他说，香蕉的气味来自一种叫乙酸异戊酯的化合物，也被人称作香蕉油。它是蜜蜂蛰伤产生的化合物之一。蜜蜂造成蛰伤时会释放一系列混合的报警信息素，告知蜂群有一只蜜蜂处于危险之中。
But that chemical cocktail doesn’t just attract other bees. It also draws tiny flies known as kleptoparasites, “or so-called ‘food stealers’.” The flies feed on the drippings of bees being devoured by spiders. And they sense the bees’ chemical calls for help as a dinner bell.
但是这杯化学“鸡尾酒”不仅吸引其他蜜蜂，也会吸引一些被称作“窃食者”的小型蝇类。这种蝇类以掉落的正在被蜘蛛吞噬的蜜蜂残骸为食。它们感知蜜蜂发出的化学物质以此作为晚餐的信号（蜜蜂发出的求救信号，就是它们的晚餐铃声）。
Turns out, though, it’s not the flies…but a flower that has the last word in this tale of trickery. Because researchers have now discovered that the flower of a South African plant – called the parachute plant – produce nearly three dozen of the 90-some compounds in that honeybee alarm call. Meaning they mimic the scent of a honeybee in danger—to lure in and temporarily trap the flies, as a pollination ploy. The findings are in the journal Current Biology. [Annemarie Heiduk et al., Ceropegia sandersonii Mimics Attacked Honeybees to Attract Kleptoparasitic Flies for Pollination]
然而，这个欺骗故事的最终主角不是这些蝇类，而是一种花。研究者发现，蜜蜂报警信息素包含了90多种化合物，而一种名为醉龙（Ceropegia sandersonii）的南非植物的的花朵可以制造其中的三分之一。这表明，它们模仿了蜜蜂处于危险时散发的气味，以此来引诱蝇类为自身授粉。这项发现发表在《现代生物学》（Current Biology）上 [Annemarie Heiduk et al., Ceropegia sandersonii Mimics Attacked Honeybees to Attract Kleptoparasitic Flies for Pollination]。
The plant of course isn’t aware of this bait-and-switch. “It’s just by chance that this plant produced these compounds and attracted these small flies as pollinators. And thus by time, it was possible to refine these plants, and to add another and another compound to finally get such a nice cocktail.” This cocktail, though, that won’t be followed by a meal.
这种植物当然没有意识到这是一个诱饵。“这种植物产生这些化合物然后吸引苍蝇成为自己的传粉者，而这只是一个巧合。因此假以时日，我们有可能改良这些植物，向它们添加一种又一种新的化合物，最终得到一份完美的“鸡尾酒”。“当然，不是晚餐后饮用的鸡尾酒。
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