Cikk a Journal of Ecology című folyóiratban
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| Molnár V. Attila felvétele |
A közlemény már hivatkozható (doi: 10.1111/1365-2745.12511) és az előfizetők számára le is tölthető a folyóirat honlapjáról. A cikk előreláthatóan a jövő évi első számában jelenik majd meg.
Ennek a cikknek a megjelenése azért is fontos és örömteli számomra, mert ez volt az első kutatási téma, amelybe a Debreceni Egyetem Növénytani Tanszékén BSc hallgatóként bekapcsolódhattam. Az akkori, még kezdetleges eredményeinkkel 2011-ben OTDK III. helyezést értünk el (Sonkoly Judit, E. Vojtkó Anna és Hegedűs Roland: Magyarországi orchideák termésenkénti magszámának vizsgálata új módszerrel) Molnár V. Attila témavezetésével. Azóta igencsak kinőtte magát a projekt (és a szerzősor), olyannyira, hogy helyet kaptunk az egyik legnagyobb nemzetközi ökológiai folyóiratban.
Higher seed number compensates for lower fruit-set in deceptive orchids
Judit Sonkoly, Anna E Vojtkó, Jácint Tökölyi, Péter Török, Gábor Sramkó, Zoltán Illyés
and Attila Molnár V
1.Floral deception is widespread in
orchids, with more than one third of the species being pollinated this
way. The evolutionary success of deceptive orchids is puzzling, as
species employing this strategy are thought to have low reproductive
success (less flowers yielding fruits) because of low pollination rates.
However, direct measurements of total seed production in orchids –
which is a better measure of reproductive success – are scarce due to
the extremely small size of their seeds.
2.Here,
we quantified seed numbers in 1,015 fruits belonging to 48 orchid
species from the Pannonian ecoregion (central Europe) and obtained
fruit-set and thousand-seed weight data for these species from the
literature. We used phylogenetic comparative methods to test the
hypothesis that deceptive species should compensate for their lower
fruit-set by having either more flowers, larger seeds or more seeds in a
fruit.
3.Similarly to previous studies,
we found that deceptive orchids have substantially lower fruits-set than
nectar-rewarding ones. Also, we found that deceptive species have more
seeds in a fruit but not more flowers or larger seeds compared to
nectar-rewarding ones. Based on our results, deceptive species
compensate for their lower fruit-set by having higher seed numbers per
fruit. As a consequence, their seed numbers per shoot do not differ from
that of nectar-rewarding ones.
4.Together
with other benefits of deceptive pollination (e.g. lower energy
expenditure due to the lack of nectar production and higher genetic
variability due to decreased probability of geitonogamous pollination),
our results can explain why deceptive strategies are so widespread in
the orchid family.
5.Synthesis. Our
results indicate that deceptive orchids can compensate for their lower
fruit-set by having more (but not larger) seeds in a fruit than
rewarding species. These findings highlight possible ways in which
plants can increase their reproductive success in face of pollinator
limitation. We emphasize that fruit-set in itself is an inappropriate
measure of the reproductive success of orchids – the total number of
seeds per shoot is a much better approximation.

