Gobbling up your pollinator

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Insectivorous plants benefit from trapped, dead insects as a source of nutrients. On the other hand, most of these plants also depend on free-moving, live insects as pollen vectors for sexual reproduction. This pollinator-prey conflict can be resolved by temporal separation of flower and trap development through the life-history of individuals. Spatial segregation of both systems can also resolve this conflict, as illustrated here by two Drosera species (D. spatulata and D. arcturi; Figures 1A-B). Other species (such as D. auriculata; Figure 1C) are able to produce distinct chemical signaling profiles for flowers and traps, thus relying on the ability of pollinators to differentiate between these chemical cues. Nonetheless, even in the presence of such traits, potential pollinators may end trapped by their mutualistic partners.

Develop a mathematical model that represents the dynamics of population densities on pollinator-prey conflicts in carnivorous plants and explore the implied consequences for these species.

Initially, you may consider a system with three components: one for carnivorous plant density, one for pollinator density, and one for prey density. Moreover, the following three questions may be used as guidelines for exploring this situation:

• What is the indirect effect of pollinator density on prey density?
• Can a carnivorous plant population survive only relying on pollinators for both reproductive and nutritional purposes?
• Investigate the effects of the mechanisms carnivorous plants may employ to resolve these conflicts. For instance, you may assume that during the phenological cycle of the plant there is a marked reproductive phase where flowers are produced and traps are supressed, thus inducing temporal segregation between flowers and traps.

El-Sayed, Ashraf M., John A. Byers, and David M. Suckling. “Pollinator-Prey Conflicts in Carnivorous Plants: When Flower and Trap Properties Mean Life or Death.” Scientific Reports 6 (February 18, 2016): 21065. doi:10.1038/srep21065.

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