Try smelling it.
Airborne chemicals found in common fossil fuels can interfere with the pollination process, even changing the way flowers smell, a new study has found.
While this may have some impact on people who are accustomed to stopping to smell the roses, the impact on insects, who are unable to find flowers to perch on, is particularly worrying at night. say experts.
“Contamination from human activities is changing the chemical composition of important scent cues to the point that pollinators are no longer able to recognize or respond to them,” said researcher Jeff Riffel. Ta.
Riffel and other scientists at the University of Washington, who published their findings in the journal Science, discovered that nitric acid radicals, known as NO3, are behind this scent-masking phenomenon.
They come from gas, coal, power plants, and other energy and natural resources.
“When you smell a rose, you smell a diverse bouquet of different types of chemicals,” Riffel added.
“The same is true for almost any flower. Each has its own unique scent, made up of a specific chemical recipe.”
They experimented with moths, which have an excellent sense of smell, like dogs, to see if the winged moths could use their strong sense of smell to locate specific flowers.
One of the two moth varieties was 50% less accurate when tested in an urban environment at night, and the other was unable to locate the flower source at all.
“NO3 really reduces a flower’s ‘reaching range,’ or how far a scent can travel and attract pollinators before it breaks down and becomes undetectable,” Riffel said. said.
However, the daytime statistics were not as severe as the research team believes sunlight can weaken the power of NO3.
In any case, there are now concerns that pollinators such as moths will no longer be able to fulfill their ecological obligations.
Riffel said about 75% of the more than 240,000 recorded flowering plants require insect intervention, and about 70 species of pollinators are endangered or threatened with extinction. He pointed out that it was in danger.
Researcher Joel Thornton said: “Our approach allows others to investigate how pollutants affect plant-pollinator interactions and to clarify the underlying mechanisms in practice.” “This could serve as a roadmap for elucidating this issue.”
“We need this kind of integrated approach, especially if we want to understand how widespread disruption of plant-pollinator interactions is and what the consequences will be.”
