Flowers which mimic the smell of carrion and faeces were under the spotlight in research work done by Marc du Plessis for his MSc in Ecological Sciences degree.
Du Plessis focused his research on pollination ecology and, in particular, the pollination ecology of two carrion/faeces mimicking plants, examining the functional significance of the unusual floral traits – both visual and olfactory – associated with the attraction of flies as pollinators.
He received his degree at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s (UKZN) spring graduation held on the Westville campus last week.
“I have always been interested in stapeliads, which is the group of plants I studied.
I was a collector even before I enrolled for postgraduate studies.”
Du Plessis’s fascination for the succulent stapeliads is visually evident in the form of a large tattoo of a stapeliad flower on his arm.
“The significance of my research is that we are getting closer to understanding the pollination of carrion or faeces mimicking flowers. This is a very complex system and one that we are far from fully understanding,” said du Plessis.
One of Du Plessis’s supervisor’s, Dr Adam Shuttleworth said this was an unusual project.
“Studying flowers which mimic carrion and faeces lent a somewhat macabre aspect to some of his data collection. When he wasn’t studying the pollination biology of plants in the field, he would spend time trying to recreate dead rotting animals – using pieces of animal hide and a mix of rotten fish and chicken livers – in order to explore how flies respond to different aspects of carrion.”
Shuttleworth explained just how dedicated Du Plessis was in his attempts to understand the characteristics of carrion or faeces which his flowers mimicked: “He even convinced an academic at the University of Pretoria to let him balance chunks of rotten ox liver and different faeces on her spectrometer in order to measure their colours for comparison with his flowers!”