SOS!Tugaoxiang actually asked for meat bee!The truth behind it is sad

Text ｜ "China Science News" reporter Hu Yanqi

Photo by the soil agarwood seed and the bep Zhu Renbin

Agarwood, known as the "Diamond in the Wood", will emit a strong fragrance after being injured, making it into incense and lingering.

In the late spring and early summer, a piece of native agarwood forest in the Nishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (hereinafter referred to as the Picna Botanical Garden) is the season of seed harvest.

The mature soil agarwood fruits are first cracking a small gap. As the cracks get larger and larger, the seeds like pods quickly slipped down, hanging in the air with only a silk thread.

Just as the staff carefully collected these precious seeds in order to cultivate seedlings, a group of "low -altitude killers" -the beps suddenly visited.

They flew towards the fruits along the flying trajectory of the glyphs, bite off the seeds carrying oil, and quickly left. At the "section" site, the staff was stung.

As the top predator in the insect world, the bep is a proper carnivore. In a few cases, you choose "vegetarian". Is it also "Fragrant"?

On June 30, the "Contemporary Biology" magazine published a research results of the Picna Botanical Garden online, revealing the twists and turns of "killer bee" to save the "short -lived" seeds of the native agarwood.

Simulate the smell of prey and "shout for help"

In nature, there are countless examples of plants and animals. The language of communication between them is chemical signals.

"Seeds can attract carnivorous insects such as bees. One of the important reasons is that the signal it provides can directly or indirectly indicate the existence of insect prey." Wang Gang, author of the paper communication author and researcher of Picna Botanical Garden.

In 2018, a study by the research team of Chen Gao, a researcher at the Institute of Kunming Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, showed that the "obsessed" of the bep "fascinated" the big hundred fruits was because of the oil and physical fitness of the seeds attached to the seeds in the fruits. These oily bodies are delicious and juicy and nutritious.

As a result, the bee treats it as a favorite "prey", and it will also bring it back to the bee nest to feed larvae, and the hard seeds will be abandoned in the middle. This also made the bep in accidental spreaders of a hundred seeds.

The research team of the Penta Botanical Garden found that the seeds of the soil agarwood are also rich in oily body. Therefore, does the relationship with the bee be maintained by simulating the smell of prey?

Photo by Zhu Renbin, oily body of the bee to bite the soil agarwood seeds

However, the experimental results prove that their relationship is much more complicated than the original cognition.

After detailed analysis of the smell ingredients of the soil agarwood and fruits, the research team received a unexpected result. Its fruit clip could release 14 types of "help for help" component after eating pests like leaf pests.

The seeds and fruit clip Zhu Renbin of the soil agarwood

"It is not surprising that plants sending 'asking for help signal'. This is a commonly existed -feeding defense mechanism that it has evolved in the three -level nutritional relationship between the pests and pests." Wang Gang explained.

When pests eat plant leaves, the leaves will quickly release a large amount of volatile pheromone, so as to inform the pest of the natural enemy "there is your prey here."

"However, the practice of plant simulation for help to attract insects to attract insects to spread seeds is rare." This discovery stimulated Wang Gang's curiosity.

Plants send one more signal, which means consume more energy. Why is Agarwood more than this to attract the biography of the bep? What causes soil agarwood to evolve such a special strategy during the process of seed dispersing?

"Short -lived" and fast distribution

If Tuyangxiang speaks, in addition to pouring the incense process of damage, there may be an unknown "short -lived" experience.

As of December 2020, the Southwest Wild Biological Seeds Resource Library has preserved 10601 plant seeds, and the soil agarwood is not among them, which is not consistent with its endangered status.

"This is because the seed resource library generally uses a low -temperature drying environment, which is fatal to the soil agarwood seeds." Wang Gang told the China Science News.

Earth agarwood represents a special type of plant type, and their seeds are called stubborn seeds or non -dormant seeds. After the fruits are cracked, the vitality and water of the seeds decreased sharply with the extension of the time exposed in the canopy, which is easy to dry and die. Because of its short life in the seed period, it needs to be spread quickly and fall into the humid and cool soil.

"In the past, we rarely paid attention to how this kind of" short -lived "seeds spread? How fast is the distribution time?" Chen Jin, author of the paper communication author and researcher of Penta Botanical Garden, said that it was the answer to this research.

"We strictly recorded the time and trajectory of 482 beps to carry agarwood seeds. As a result, after the cracked fruits of the earth and the seeds were exposed, the average waiting time of the fruit was only 30 minutes. After that, the bep can take off the seeds from the fruit pod at the fastest for only 1 minute. And they handle the seeds to the longest distance of more than 400 meters. "Qin Ruimin, a papers first, and Ph.D. of the Penta Botanical Garden, introduced excitedly.

Compared with the existing research, Richard Corlett, a British researcher in the British Botanical Garden, has participated in a study in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, China, and found that the time of 34 wild plants under natural conditions was removed from 5 days to 71 days from 5 days to 71 days. Essence Obviously, their reaction speed is far less than the bee.

"The stronger the signal substance released by the plant, the higher the signal transmission efficiency, which can attract the arrival of the animals more quickly." Wang Gang said that the team's experimental data also proves this. They compared the volatility of soil agarwood to release the volatility of the scent of prey.

It can be seen that for the soil agarwood, the simulated "help signal" can achieve the purpose of seed distribution in the shortest time than simulating the smell of prey.

"This study once again illustrates a constant law in nature: there is no material and one purpose, and no function is achieved by one material." Chen Jin told the China Science News.

Chen Gao commented that the research provided a new perspective of thinking about the connotation of the seeds and extension of the seeds of vertebrates.

For example, why is the fruit clip entered an attractive signal, not directly deployed on the seed communication; the seedlings of the seeds are short, the dissemination speed, and the rapid release of volatiles is to avoid the predation pressure of rodents in other forests; short life, unshanding, dormant sleepless sleep How to achieve a balance between the rapid transmission of the plant and the fast -propagation of the seeds and the opposite plant communication strategy ...

Precisely capture the sense of smell of the bee

The natural ecosystem is a whole. In Wang Gang's view, realizing the relationship between fans, parasites, seed distribution, and feeding defense may be intertwined and affecting each other, which can greatly broaden the perspective of research.

In this study, the key evidence of linked seed dispersing mechanism and feeding defense mechanism, analyzing the composition analysis of the composition of the substance from the earthen agarwood fruit, and the electro -physiological reaction analysis of the beps to these ingredients. These contents are also part of the dissertation reviewer.

To answer why the native agarwood fruit clip attracts the bep, what ingredients must be found to stimulate the bee's smell of smell.

"The tentacles are the olfactory organs of insects. Once it receives a sense of smell, it will generate the corresponding electrical and physiological signal." Wen Ping, an associate researcher at the Penta Botanical Garden, introduced that the tentacle potential measuring instrument is an important tool for detecting the tentacles of insects to generate such signals Essence

"The pheromone used between insects, especially male and female individuals often has a large signal intensity, higher tentacles, and easier to be detected. It is a well -eaten insect. There are many types of prey signal it to process. The electro -physiological signal generated by the for help from the plant is much weaker. Therefore, the sensitivity of the detection instrument is the key to the success of the experiment.

At present, it is generally used in China for commercial instruments imported from Germany. At least ten years ago, Wen Ping discovered that the American laboratory is more inclined to independently develop this instrument platform for scientific research.

But even so, in the past, if you want to detect the activity of the insect tentacles trace signal, the sensitivity of the instrument is not ideal.

Therefore, in the four or five years of working in the Picna Botanical Garden, Wen Ping conducted electrical research and conducting independent instrument platform research and development.

Qi phase chromatography-tentacal potential combined with Yi Wenping Photo

In 2020, he and the Public Technical Service Center developed the successful "gas chromatography -contact potential use instrument" to change the signal detection limit from the hecy level to the micro -level, and the sensitivity increased by 10 to 100 times compared with the imported instrument, but the cost of development cost Only one -tenth of the imported instruments. As a result, it has also been selected for the "Chinese Academy of Sciences Autonomous Development Science Instruments 2020" special issue.

Wen Ping believes that in chemical ecology based on volatile analysis, such instruments are very important for interpretation of interaction between species in ecosystems.

"We must also avoid the idea of ​​only equipment theory, not chasing big, comprehensive, and pursuing expensive." In Wang Gang, many times, as long as you can make or improve the existing equipment according to research issues and experimental materials. In some parts, it can achieve four or two pounds.

Pay attention to and encourage scientific researchers to min and upgrade the functional mining and transformation of existing scientific research equipment, and can also promote the in -depth innovation and development of theoretical research.

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Edit | Li Yun

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