科学美国人60秒:Flowers Deceive Flies with Chemical Cocktail

Honeybee stings are painful. But they're also… fragrant. "If a beekeeper gets stung by bees, it smells like banana." Dr. Stefan Dötterl, a plant ecologist at the University of Salzburg in Austria.
被蜂蜜叮一下非常的疼。但是，伤口处却…..有香味。“如果养蜂人被蜜蜂叮了。伤口处闻起来像香蕉。”Stefan Dötterl是澳大利亚萨尔茨堡大学大学的植物生态学家。

That banana scent, he says, is a compound called isoamyl acetate - also known as banana oil. It's one of many compounds produced when a bee stings - a mix of alarm pheromones that let the hive know that another bee's in danger.
Stefan Dötterl表示，这种香蕉香味其实是一种乙酸异戊酯化合物，也称为香蕉油。当蜜蜂叮咬时，其实产生很多化合物——这种混合气体所发出的警报让蜂群知道，有蜜蜂身处危险。

But that chemical cocktail doesn't just attract other bees. It also draws tiny flies known as kleptoparasites, "or so-called 'food stealers'." The flies feed on the drippings of bees being devoured by spiders. And they sense the bees' chemical calls for help as a dinner bell.
但是那些化学混合物并不会吸引其他蜜蜂。相反，它会吸引一种小苍蝇，也被称为“偷寄生蜂”或者也称为“食物小偷”。这些苍蝇以蜘蛛蚕食的蜜蜂的肉汁为食。它们将蜜蜂的化学求救信号视为“晚饭铃”。

Turns out, though, it's not the flies… but a flower that has the last word in this tale of trickery. Because researchers have now discovered that the flowers of a South African plant - called the parachute plant - produce nearly three dozen of the 90-some compounds in that honeybee alarm call. Meaning they mimic the scent of a honeybee in danger--to lure in and temporarily trap the flies, as a pollination ploy. The findings are in the journal Current Biology.
研究结果表明“这场骗局最后的胜利者其实是一种花。”因为研究人员发现，南非一种植物的花——降落伞花——可以产生约几百种化合物，这些化合物的所散发的气味就包含了蜜蜂发出的求救信号。这也就意味着，这些花模仿了蜜蜂发出的危险信号——来引诱和暂时诱捕这种小苍蝇，这是它们的一种授粉的方法。该研究结果发表在《当代生物学》杂志上。

The plant of course isn't aware of this bait-and-switch. "It's just by chance that this plant produced these compounds and attracted these small flies as pollinators. And thus by time, it was possible to refine these plants, and to add another and another compound to finally get such a nice cocktail." A cocktail, though, that won't be followed by a meal.
当然，植物并没有意识到这是一种诱骗。“这种植物产生这些化合物来吸引这些小苍蝇来授粉。当然，时间或许可以使这些植物进化，进而产生其他的化合物最终产生一种绝美的混合物，就像鸡尾酒一样。”而鸡尾酒之后呢，不再会是一顿晚餐啦~