Many flowering plants rely on visual and chemical signals to attract pollinators. Food-deceptive orchids attract their pollinators without offering nectar rewards, instead exploiting pollinator sensory expectations. Dactylorhiza sambucina is a food-deceptive orchid with two flower colour morphs that coexist within populations, a polymorphism thought to be maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection. While colour variation in this species is well studied, it remains unknown whether the morphs also differ in floral scent, a key but often overlooked component of pollinator attraction.
This project aims to investigate whether variation in floral scent parallels colour polymorphism and whether the co-flowering community context, including other food-deceptive orchids as well as rewarding and non-rewarding plant species, contributes to maintaining colour and/or scent variation within populations through pollinator-mediated interactions.
Appreciated knowledge: background on pollination biology or plant ecology is desirable but not required.
- Motivation to conduct fieldwork (approx. 2.5 months on the beautiful Öland)
- Willingness to learn floral scent chemical analysis (GC–MS, chromatogram integration)
- Willingness to learn multivariate data analysis in R
Length of the project: MSc, 45-60 credits.
Start date: end of April/beginning May 2026.
Contact info: Yedra García (yedra.garcia_garcia@biol.lu.se), Øystein Opedal (oystein.opedal@biol.lu.se), Magne Friberg (magne.friberg@biol.lu.se)
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/yedra-garcia-garcia/