How do flowers deceive insects into pollinating them , and what does this reveal about how olfactory systems encode meaning? Bill Hansson explores the evolutionary arms race between plants and pollinators through the lens of insect chemosensory neuroscience. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Bill Hansson studies olfaction in insects, and his entry point is one of nature's most elaborate deceptions. One-third of all orchid species are deceptive , they attract pollinators without offering nectar rewards, instead mimicking the chemical signatures of food, mates, or egg-laying sites with extraordinary precision. Hansson describes flowers that replicate the individual odor variation of female bees so accurately that males never learn to avoid them, and Mediterranean lilies that mimic both the volatile chemistry and ...