One of life’s many pleasures is stopping to smell the roses, but flowers don’t just make their sweet scents for human enjoyment. The fragrances are biological signals that broadcast a plant’s location to potential pollinators. Delightful (or occasionally dreadful) smells drifting on the breeze enable plants to attract insects and other animals to stop by and spread some pollen. Unfortunately, air pollution is getting in the way, according to a study published February 8 in the journal Science.
The researchers behind the new paper assessed the impacts of ozone (O3) and a nitrate radical (NO3) on some moths’ ability to detect and pollinate evening primrose flowers at night. They found that these pollutants, common byproducts of car exhaust and burning fossil fuel, react with and deactivate key attraction chemicals in the flower’s scent. In the presence of nitrate radicals, significantly fewer moths visit primrose flowers. The plants rely on moths and other nocturnal pollinators to produce fruit, and the scientists’ results suggest that–amid air pollution–evening primrose flowers are less able to propagate the next generation. It’s a troubling set of findings that carries implications far beyond just one insect’s diet or one flower’s seed production.
“Pollinators play a huge role in community ecology; they’re critical for the fitness of plants. If you affect that, then you’re going to have ecosystem-wide impacts,” says Jeff Riffell, co-senior study author and a biology professor at the University of Washington. “Pollinators are also critical for our food system and food security,” he adds– mess with the wrong insects and humans could end up paying the toll too.
Pollution isn’t always as simple as a deadly chemical spilled into a lake. Less direct, sensory pollution can harm animals in all sorts of surprising ways. There’s the city lights that draw migrating birds into collisions with building windows and…
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