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C.Rayz

C.Rayz club

Posted: 01 Aug 2013

Taken: 08 Jul 2013

1 favorite     3 comments    344 visits

1/400 • f/9.0 • 100.0 mm • ISO 200 •

Canon EOS 500D

EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II

EXIF - See more details

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Charles Darwin Charles Darwin

Keywords

nature •
Bee Orchid •
st leonards on sea •
Nature Reserve •
east sussex •
hastings •
wildflower •
orchid •
wildlife •
Hastings Country Park •

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Bee Orchid

Bee Orchid

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Comments
 C.Rayz
C.Rayz club
This is why I love Orchids and especially the mimics, they are not trying to hide from something, they are (like most flowers) trying to attract something. The Bee Orchid has gone to great lengths to mimic the female of a species of Bumble Bee sitting on a lovely purple flower, right down to giving off fake pheromones. They believe this is to widen the gene pool as insects will travel farther to find a mate then they would simply to eat, and to ensure that they get more widely distributed. Most of these mimics don't even produce any nectar.

This is a great strategy, until you learn that because we are on an island, the bee this flower mimics is actuallly extinct in Britain. This particular flower can self pollinate luckily, however it does mean that it tends to be in small areas and not widely spread. There are other mimics that do still depend soley on the insect they mimic to pollinate, like Fly Orchids and Early/Late Spider, the later of which is actally a bee mimic as well.

A couple of interesting links
PBS Info
Natural History Museum
11 years ago.
 C.Rayz
C.Rayz club
They are but don't forget its all about the fittest surviving, one that smells like something else dies, one that has the better marks that look more like the female survive better, etc....over years this makes them better and better. Basically if you think about it, its all about the 'right' mutation...lol
11 years ago.
 C.Rayz
C.Rayz club
No but, don't forget the Peppered moth when we talk about this, I can remember learning about it in school and its something I explain to children when doing the talks about camouflage. Here in Britain, the Peppered moth was mostly a pepper speckled looking moth, but during the industrial age here, (Late 1800's I believe) the trees became dark with pollutants and the white and black speckled moths showed up and were easily seen and eaten by the birds, the mutant melanistic ones survived and reproduced, then when we started cleaning our act up and the trees went back to normal the dark moths could not hide as well and got eaten leaving the speckled (still most seen today) to survive and reproduce. This is an animal and its not happening in seconds under a microscope but realatively speaking a short amount of time, evolution changes and then changes back.
11 years ago.

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