Posted by admin | Posted in News about Flowers | Posted on 03-12-2009
Tags: smell flowers
Air pollution is killing the smell of flowers, possibly eliminating the “scent trail” that helps guide those terribly important pollinators, like bees, to the plants that depend upon them for survival, scientists believe.
The discovery could be one of several factors in the “colony collapse disorder” that is wiping out honey bees around the world.
While it is still too soon to determine the full impact of air pollution on the symbiotic relationship between insects and the flowers they pollinate, researchers at the University of Virginia are confident they have shown that pollutants are killing the scent trail, and that could turn out to be extremely significant.