Australia: Why do seed carrots rely on hoverflies for their pollination?

Crops are not united by bees. For example, honeybees generally do not consider carrot flowers attractive to themselves, and hoverflies, on the contrary, pollinate carrots diligently. Australian scientists have explored New Zealand's experience in attracting hoverflies to pollinate crops and have proposed installing compost pools for these insects. “Seed carrots are an ideal model crop for studying a potential non-bee pollinator, namely the cosmopolitan hoverfly species Eristalis tenax (ed. Ed. Ilnitsa tenacious or Ilnitsa vulgaris). Honeybees usually find seed carrot flowers extremely unattractive, as the nectar contains a lot of ferulic acid, which repels bees, and little caffeic acid, which attracts them. Meanwhile, hoverflies have been shown in many studies to be efficient pollinators of crops, as they are morphologically similar to honeyflies in terms of body size and hairiness, despite the absence of specialized pollen-gathering structures. In fact, E. tenax is already a ...