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Author Spotlight: A High-Resolution, Single-Grain, In Vivo Pollen Hydration Bioassay for Arabidopsis thaliana

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An ancient push-pull pollination mechanism in cycads.

Shayla Salzman^1,2,3, Damon Crook⁴, James D Crall¹

¹Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

Science Advances

|June 26, 2020

Summary

Cycads use a push-pull pollination strategy, attracting insects with scents and then repelling them, a method possibly ancient and ancestral to flowering plants.

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Area of Science:

Plant-insect interactions
Evolutionary biology
Pollination ecology

Background:

Most cycads rely on brood-site pollination mutualisms.
The specific mechanisms by which cycads attract diverse insect pollinators are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the pollination mechanism in a New World cycad and its weevil pollinators.
To compare this mechanism with that of an Old World cycad and its thrips pollinators.
To determine if a push-pull pollination strategy is ancestral in Cycadales.

Main Methods:

Behavioral observations of cycad-pollinator interactions.
Molecular phylogenetic dating to establish evolutionary timelines.
Meta-analysis of thermogenesis and volatile organic compound (VOC) signaling.
Comparative analysis of pollination mechanisms across different cycad lineages.

Main Results:

A push-pull pollination mechanism was identified between a New World cycad and its weevil pollinators.
This mechanism mirrors that observed in a distantly related Old World cycad and its thrips pollinators.
Evidence suggests this push-pull strategy is ancestral to the Cycadales, predating visual floral signaling.

Conclusions:

The push-pull pollination strategy, involving coordinated attraction and repulsion via volatiles and thermogenesis, appears to be an ancient and conserved mechanism in cycads.
This strategy may represent one of the earliest forms of insect-plant pollination, originating before the evolution of visual floral displays in angiosperms.
Understanding this mechanism provides insights into the early evolution of pollination systems.