Nectar resorption and plant reproduction

Nectar removal and nectar resorption are processes that can impact a plant's reproductive success, but their overall costs and benefits have not been fully assessed in terms of complete reproductive outputs. This study is the first attempt to compare the nectar production resorption with plant fitness in the same currency of ‘energy’. This research involves repeated artificial nectar addition (Sugar types: fructose/glucose, sucrose) and repeated nectar removal in control and experimental sets. we proposed hypothetical testing whether receiving and absorbing additional artificial nectar is associated with reproductive benefits and is independent of the sugar composition of the nectar, and whether nectar removal is associated with reproduction costs. Sucrose-treated flowers had reproductive benefits as they converted 79% of added caloric value into increased reproductive output, while fructose/glucose-treated flowers only utilized 42% and had no significant increase in reproductive metrics. These results suggest that the utilization of resorbed nectar in seed formation depends on sugar chemistry. On the other hand, Nectar removal plants had significant low reproductive outputs and reduced the reproductive outputs by 2.9 times of manipulated caloric value. Nectar resorption may act at flower level whereas nectar production at plant level, that could be future direction to understand the underlying relationships.