How did this happen? Manipulative flowers? :P?

Question

"There are species of orchids that have puzzled naturalists since the days of Darwin. They seemed to offer no inducement as their part of the deal, yet still insects did their job. At last, in 1928, a woman named Edith Coleman solved the problem in her study of an Australian orchid named Cryptosylia. The scent, a perfect imitation of the smell of the female of a species of fly, acted as an aphrodisiac on the male. He was drawn to the flower. There he encountered as part of the orchid's structure a perfect imitation of the female's abdomen. It was all too much for him, and in his efforts to copulate with the orchid he got himself nicely dusted with pollen. I am aware of no more immoderate fraud in the natural world. "

The Social Contract, Robert Ardrey

I just think this is amazing. How could these flowers have adapted like this?

Answer 1

It's all a part of the evolutionary process.  Early on, some orchids may have had just a faint resemblance to the insect, but it was enough to attract the fly, so the plant with the similar characteristic was able to reproduce.  Maybe a lot of other which didn't resemble insects weren't so lucky.  And if the fly was primary pollinator in that area, and was busy looking for females, the orchids with flowers which looked most like females were the ones which were pollinated most often.  Through thousands of generations, the result was an orchid which was almost identical to the female fly.  The pheromone (female attractive scent) was also developed in the same way.

A now out-of publication from back in the 70s did an article about orchid reproduction that they likened to an X-rated movie.  Some orchids produce an intoxicating fluid to make insects drunk and some mimic female insects (some wasp species are also imitated).  Some imitate the look and odor of decaying meat and attact female insects looking for a place to lay their eggs.  One species has a nectar tube 12 inches long - at the time, no known insect had mouthparts that could reach that far, but one was later discovered (the pollinator of that particular species).  National Geographic magazine also did an article about orchid pollination strategies around the same decade.