Molly Moseley

Understanding the chemical ecology of scent mediated pollination

The project

I came to this university in 2020 as an undergraduate student, finishing my MbiolSci in 2024, then starting my PhD in September 2024. I am based in the department of Biosciences in the Plants Photosynthesis research cluster, a part of my primary supervisor, Dr. Stuart Campbell’s research group. My secondary supervisors are multidisciplinary, with Dr Michael Smith from Computer science and Prof Juriaan Ton from Biosciences. My PhD is funded by the Institute for Sustainable food, which is a part of the University of Sheffield. 

Pollinators are key for facilitating the reproduction of most angiosperm species, including a majority of fruit and vegetable crop species. This strong mutualism has driven an extraordinary diversity of floral traits important for mediating pollinating insect visitation, including colour, shape and floral scent. However, compared with visual traits, little is known about pollinators’ utilisation of complex scent blends. Floral scents contained in these blends are also highly changeable depending on different environmental stressors, and whilst some of these stress-induced changes can be costly, there is evidence that some plants adaptively modulate their scents to improve pollination. Mechanisms which drive this are largely unknown, which are important to understand in the face of climate change, where many key environmental stresses are predicted to increase.

Investigating how scent traits respond to stress and their function for pollinators has important implications for predicting how this mutualism will respond to climate change, with potential applications in agricultural settings as many important crops are facing a double-edged threat of pollinator declines and increased environmental stress. In my PhD I seek to further our understanding of scent-mediated pollination primarily using the important fruit crop Solanum lycopersicum and its wild relatives. Within my research I utilise a range of methodologies, ranging from bumblebee behavioural studies which we are implementing a novel video-tracking technique, to lab-based chemical ecology utilising GC-MS (gas chromatography mass spectrometry).