Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REPRINT ARTICLE ARCHIVES => Topic started by: manfre on March 12, 2009, 12:59:04 pm
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Flower Scent Destroyed by Air Pollution (http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2008/04/flower-scent-destroyed-air-pollution)
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I don't belive it, its just the environmentalist trying to say how man is evil and it would be a better place if man was gone (except for them). With the man made global warming dying they are trying to find another cause to pervert. :-D
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Okay maybe we have more smells to deal with than we had in the 1800's but to think it would make flowers less fragrant to me doesn't make sense. Seems to me, through an evolutionary stand point, with greater competition among smells the flowers would grow more fragrant not less. Those with less fragrance would be passed up by the bees and not get pollinated and hence die off. So the super fragrant flowers would have more bee activity and therefore do better. But that's just my humble thinking.
Keith
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A big hole in your reasoning is human intervention. We cultivate plants (and animals) for specific traits that have nothing to do with their ability to better reproduce. Pollinators in areas are weakened, if not killed from the use of chemicals. Many hardy plants are deemed weeds and eradicated from properties to preserve artificially pristine lawns. Without human intervention, plants would follow a more true form of evolution where the surviving plants would be those most enticing to pollinators, whether by providing more nutrients, easier to find, or proximity to hives.
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I agree, without humane intervention evolution of the plant species would probably follow a more true evolution. But fact is humans are here and will be for awhile and because of that other species adapt to the constraints mankind puts on them; hence, flowers in a highly polluted area might need to become more fragrant to attract the pollinators.
Keith