Deceptive Daisy Species in South Africa Creates Fake Flies for Pollination

For pollination, a deceptive species of daisy that can be found in South Africa produces fake flies to entice real ones.

Deceptive Beetle Daisy from South Africa

In southwest Africa, Namaqualand, which is a blooming desert, an unassuming orange flower known as the South African beetle daisy (Gorteria diffusa) has ways to make pollination a guarantee.

A remarkable instance of plant sexual deception, or pseudocopulation, becomes apparent upon closer inspection.

This occurs when a plant develops an object that resembles a bug or other pollinator almost exactly to draw an unintentional host to spread pollen and produce new plants.

Although this is fairly typical behavior in plants, almost all examples come from orchids, a class of flower with over 28,000 species.

With their ability to fill virtually endless niches and develop specialized relationships with the animals around them, orchids are a strong illustration of an evolutionary success story.

One of the few non-orchid sexual deceivers, beetle daisies occasionally have dark, raised spots on their petals at the base of their yellow-orange florets.

The dark areas precisely resemble dark flies perched on the flower.

A few reflective white dots are surrounded by green-black pigment and hairy bumps that resemble the exoskeleton of an insect.

It deceives the male bombylid fly with this appearance.

The male will also swoop down and attempt to mate with the sham fly when it sees a beetle daisy flower.

Pollen is produced in large quantities by all the agitated buzzing, which aids the flower in dispersing it to the following blossom.

The primary pollinator of these flowers is this fly species.

Deceiving Flies, Baffling Botanists

Botanists have been perplexed by beetle daisies for centuries, but a recent genetic analysis published in the journal Current Biology revealed how the flower accomplishes this, which aids in the explanation of more intricate evolutionary trends.

The fly-like pattern differs depending on the type of beetle daisy.

Some have a few fakes on a few petals, while others are full of them.

The researchers at the University of Cambridge shed light on how the flower modifies the color of its petals and their shape by sequencing the genomes of various strains.

According to the authors, there are no known instances of plants that engage in partial pseudocopulation.

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Co-Option

Professor Beverley Glover from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge argued that this daisy did not develop a new "make a fly" gene.

Glover, the study's lead author, claimed that the flower came up with a better solution.

It combined already-existing genes that are already active in various parts of the plant to create a complex spot on the petals that tricks male flies, Eureka Alert reported.

Co-option is a term from evolutionary biology that has been employed to explain why some attributes in nature appear to be miraculous.

In short, it refers to the joining of genes. Co-option describes this as a form of genetic recycling in which a trait is not lost but rather modified to serve a different purpose.

An iconic example is the feathers of birds, which evolved in some dinosaurs for display and weather protection before eventually being useful for flight, Salon reported.