Research Shows Plants Use Heat to Attract Pollinators

Wendy Valencia Montoya, a Harvard Junior Fellow and Science & SciLifeLab Prize winner, demonstrated that plants attract pollinators using heat, not solely scent. Her research on cardboard cycads and their beetle pollinators revealed male plants heat up to draw beetles for pollen collection, followed by female plants heating to encourage pollen deposition, revising previous understandings of plant-pollinator communication.