Abstract: Plant reproductive success is influenced by a variety of factors including morphological plant and floral characteristics that contribute to pollinator attraction. Floral scent, composed of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), is a trait that facilitates many plant-pollinator interactions. It is unknown how individual variation in floral VOCs contribute to plant reproductive success in most plant species. Trait variation can be measured in terms of uniqueness (similarity to next most similar individual), and originality (dissimilarity between an individual and the community average). The goals of this study are to a) determine the degree to which intraspecific variation in floral scent is related to plant reproductive success and b) create and test floral analogs (i.e., 3D printed flowers) that allow for the manipulation of floral scents. To address the first goal, we examined variation in floral scent across 10 to 30 individuals of 12 plant species and tested for correlations with pollinator visitation and seed set. We expected that individual flowers with more unique and original VOC compositions would attract fewer insect pollinators and therefore yield fewer seeds. Interestingly, preliminary analyses indicate positive, neutral, and negative relationships between floral scent metrics (i.e., originality and uniqueness) and plant reproductive success (i.e., number of viable seeds per fruit/capitulum, total mass of viable seeds per fruit/capitulum, and mass per viable seed). Scent originality was negatively correlated with total mass (p = 0.048) and number of seeds per fruit in Potentilla gracilis, and scent originality was negatively correlated with mass per seed for Arnica longifolia (p = 0.042) and Balsamorhiza sagittata. Scent originality was positively correlated with mass per seed in Monarda fistulosa. For Erythronium grandiflorum, there were positive relationships between scent originality and scent uniqueness with total mass of seeds per fruit. There were no significant relationships observed for 6 species. To address the second goal, we designed and printed 3D flowers with a central chamber to house a rubber septum dosed with floral VOCs collected from real flowers. We calibrated the VOC release rate from 3D flowers to match emissions from real flowers and assessed pollinator visitation to 3D flowers. There was no difference in pollinator visitation rate to 3D treated flowers compared to naturally-growing flowers of the same species (and lower visitation to control 3D flowers with no scent applied), indicating that 3D-printed flowers with applied floral VOCs may be useable in experiments testing the impacts of manipulated scent on pollinator attraction.
