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Floral rewards in the tribe Sisyrinchieae (Iridaceae): oil as an alternative to pollen and nectar?

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Abstract

Iridaceae is one of the few families in which floral oils are produced and collected by pollinators as a resource. Perigonal nectaries and trichomal elaiophores are highly unusual within the tribe Sisyrinchieae. Both structures occur mainly on the staminal column, while they are usually distributed on the tepals in the other tribes of the subfamily Iridoideae. Sisyrinchieae is the largest tribe of Iridaceae present on the American continent, and the diversity observed may be related to the exceptional development of trichomal elaiophores within the genus Sisyrinchium, but knowledge concerning the other types of nuptial glandular structures within the tribe is still limited, preventing us from estimating their implication for species diversity. Structural observations and histochemical tests were performed to identify and characterize glandular structures and pollen rewards within the flowers of the genera Orthrosanthus, Sisyrinchium and Solenomelus. Perigonal nectaries were detected only in Solenomelus segethi, and trichomal elaiophores were characterized only within Sisyrinchium. All species showed large amounts of additional resources available for pollinators in the form of pollenkitt and polysaccharides present in the cytoplasm of the pollen grains. The results are discussed in a phylogenetic context, with regard to pollinators and floral rewards reported for the tribe Sisyrinchieae.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to M.N. Soler and S. Brown (IFR87) for their continuous help during the light microscope studies, and to Celine Charon (Institut de Biologie des Plantes—Université Paris Sud—UMR 8618) and Juliana Troleis (Laboratório de Anatomia Vegetal “LAVeg”—Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) for additional supports. This work has benefited from the facilities and expertise of the Imagif Cell Biology Unit of the Gif campus (http://www.imagif.cnrs.fr/), which is supported by the Conseil Général de l’Essonne and received funding from the French/Brazilian CAPES/COFECUB cooperation project Sv550/07 and from the IFR87 ‘La plante et son environnement’. The first author was sponsored by a CAPES scholarship (process 3703/09-6).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Botânica, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves, 9500, Porto Alegre, 91501-970, Brazil

    Adriano Silvério & Tatiana T. Souza-Chies

  2. Laboratoire Ecologie Systématique et Evolution, UMR 8079, Université Paris-Sud, 91405, Orsay, France

    Adriano Silvério, Sophie Nadot & Olivier Chauveau

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  1. Adriano Silvério
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  2. Sophie Nadot
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  3. Tatiana T. Souza-Chies
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  4. Olivier Chauveau
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Correspondence to Adriano Silvério.

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Communicated by Scott Russell.

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Silvério, A., Nadot, S., Souza-Chies, T.T. et al. Floral rewards in the tribe Sisyrinchieae (Iridaceae): oil as an alternative to pollen and nectar?. Sex Plant Reprod 25, 267–279 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00497-012-0196-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00497-012-0196-1

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