ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Functional Plant Ecology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1627890

Deceptive Cypripedium calceolus shares more floral scent compounds with co-flowering rewarding species than those species share among each other

Provisionally accepted
Corinna  EtlCorinna Etl1Florian  EtlFlorian Etl2Robin  GuilhotRobin Guilhot3Herbert  BraunschmidHerbert Braunschmid1Karin  GrossKarin Gross1*Stefan  DötterlStefan Dötterl1
  • 1Department of Environment and Biodiversity, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria
  • 2Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  • 3CHITINE – Etudes Entomologiques, Caluire-et-Cuire, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The vast majority of flowering plants depends on animal pollinators for sexual reproduction. These plants usually provide a reward, such as nectar and/or pollen, to their pollinators and floral scent is often key to attract them. Some plants, however, do not provide any such reward though they advertise one. Even though it is well-known that such a food-deceptive pollination strategy is particularly common in orchids, the role of floral scent in attracting pollinators in such systems is often poorly understood. In this study, we compared the floral scent of the Eurasian deceptive lady's slipper orchid Cypripedium calceolus with six co-flowering rewarding species visited by the same pollinators. Cypripedium calceolus produced more floral scent compounds than the co-flowering rewarding species together and differed in the floral scent composition from them. However, C. calceolus shared at least one compound with each co-flowering rewarding species, including widespread and less widespread compounds among flower scents, and had more compounds with the co-flowering rewarding species in common than the co-flowering rewarding species among each other. Several compounds of C. calceolus, such as the aliphatic compounds 1-octanol, octyl acetate, and decyl acetate, did not occur in co-flowering plants but are known as pheromones of pollinating bees. Together, our results suggest that C. calceolus not only emits compounds that are generally common among flowering plants and attractive to many pollinators but specifically imitates floral scent compounds of multiple co-flowering plant species/pheromones of bees. These findings provide valuable insights into the ecology and evolution of floral scent in deceptive pollination systems in orchids.

Keywords: Volatile Organic Compounds, Deceptive pollination, Co-flowering community, generalized food-deception, mimicry, orchid

Received: 13 May 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Etl, Etl, Guilhot, Braunschmid, Gross and Dötterl. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Karin Gross, Department of Environment and Biodiversity, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

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