However, if the flowers at higher elevations smell differently than the ones that the pollinators usually feed on at lower elevations, will the pollinators even be able to find the flowers? Or will they become confused by the different smells? If the pollinators are unable to find the flowers, then the flowers might die because they have no method of reproducing!
My labmates and I tried to answer these questions by constructing artificial flowers with odor blends representing the chemicals released by flowers at different elevations. We stuck these flowers in the ground at various altitudes in the Himalayas and observed whether pollinators visited the artificial flowers emitting unfamiliar odors native to different elevations. We are still in the process of collecting data so we do not yet have answers to the questions posed above.
The Himalayas are a mountain range that formed when the Indian tectonic plate slammed into the Eurasian tectonic plate 50 million years ago, which is actually quite young as far as mountain ranges go! A tectonic plate is a large section of Earth's rocky outer shell. The result of this collision was the creation of this huge mountain range containing the tallest point on Earth, Mount Everest, which is called Chomolungma in Tibetan and Sagarmatha in Nepali. The tectonic plates are still moving today, so the mountains are slowly growing in height at a rate of one centimeter per year. The Himalayan peaks have significantly shaped Indian culture and are considered sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism.
