WOMAN: I really love this vegetation
that is unique to south-western Australia
because of their bizarre shapes,
bright colours of the flowers.
And there is something that is really unique to here.
I am Daniela Scaccabarozzi.
I'm a pollination biologist
and I'm studying the pollination strategy of different plants,
moreover orchids.
I come from Lake Como in Italy.
I ended up here in south-western Australia
with my husband because of our honeymoon.
We really love Western Australia
because you have the chance to be in a city,
but also to be surrounded by an amazing nature.
Today, we are at Koondoola Bushland Reserve,
which is one of the larger and more intact bushland reserve in Perth.
Pollination biology is actually the study of the pollination process
and how the pollinators are attracted to the flowers
and how the flowers invent and have adapted different strategies
for attracting the pollinators.
Orchids for me are a very deep passion
that I cultivated since I was a child.
I studied biology in particular,
and then I choose botany as a specialisation.
When I was working in a regional park in Italy,
we started a project
and that involved bees.
I wanted to discover this interaction
between bees and native plants in the park.
We wanted to investigate how bees were able to pollinate
rare flora species.
I had another experience in the Amazon Forest.
That project was focused on studying
the pollination of native vanilla.
Orchids here have different pollination strategies.
The majority of them, they reward their pollinators
by producing nectar.
But one-third of the orchids, they don't reward their pollinators.
So basically they deceive their pollinators.
The most common strategy is food deception.
And what does it mean?
Food deception is actually the strategy
in which the orchids mimic other plants
that produce nectar.
This is an example of the mimicry system
of Diuris magnifica
with a model pea plant.
In this case, it is Daviesia divaricata.
Let's look at the similarity of the flowers.
We have in the orchid the labellum
which is the platform for the insect,
which may resemble the winged petals here
in the pea plant flower.
And then we have the dorsal sepal here in the orchid,
which is here,
that may resemble the standard petal of the pea plant flower here.
When we observe the pollinator landing on the labellum
on the platform on the orchids,
actually display the same behaviour
they displayed on the pea plant flower,
where it tried to open up the wing petals here...
..exerting a pressure with the forelegs,
and did the same on the orchids too.
But here we haven't any wing petals to open up.
So the bees actually confuse the orchids
for the pea plants.
That was an incredible moment
when I saw the pollinator carrying the orchid pollen
on their head,
was a kind of, you know... I was super, super happy.
There was just an hypothesis at the beginning.
But by seeing, by observing that,
was the proof of this strategy.
We saw during this research
that the orchids have multiple interactions
with other life forms,
so when we look at the orchids,
actually we are looking at all of these relationships
within the entire ecosystem.
So once we affect a single and fragile relationship,
actually the whole ecosystem will be impacted.
And that's what I also would like to reveal
by studying them,
is the ecological meaning of these amazing plants.
I enjoy every single moment that I spend here in the bush,
and I have the chance every time I'm here,
I feel really grateful.