Communication by Chemicals

Darlington, Roger. Digital Image.
Wildflowerfinder. Web. 24 September 2016.

     In this week’s post I’ll be sharing more interesting information about communication and behavior of a certain species. Last week it was all about vocalizations as a communication style, but today I am focusing on the chemical communication found in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Also called Thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana is a self-pollinating plant, meaning it doesn’t require insects to help it out.

          
     In my biology class my professor raised a valid question that puzzled me for a while, it was: “If the Thale cress is self-pollinating, what happens when the wind or insects bring different types of pollen to the flower? How does the flower communicate to that pollen that it’s not supposed to be there?” I had no idea how to answer this because like many other people I have never thought about flower pollination in this much detail. After getting to discuss and draw conclusions with our lab groups we then get together as a class and go through our textbook for answers.

          
     In conclusion I learned that pollen grain holds a lot of information and its shape and size is very species specific to different species of plants. The Arabidopsis thaliana uses chemical communication between the stigma and the pollen grain to determine if it the right kind of pollen grain is being presented to the stigma. Other closely related species of plants have similar pollen grains that may initially stick to the stigma but once the pollen reaches a phase inside the flower called hydration, the wrong type of pollen grain will no longer get the job done.

Digital Image. Department of Ecology State of Washington.
  Web. 24 September 2016.

          
     I found this whole lesson very interesting just because I haven’t ever given chemical communication or flower communication much thought in the past. After learning this, I have also been left wondering how plants that don’t self-pollinate decide which pollen grains are the correct ones. I plan on doing further research into this in the future.

A.C.