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QUESTIONS. "What is the nature of genetic change in plant speciation? What is the relationship between prezygotic reproductive isolation via flower traits and associated pollinator behavior? Did bee pollinators co-evolve and co-diversify with angiosperm flowers, and did butterfly diversity emerge much later? In what ways do floral traits affect rates of plant species diversification, for example traits controlling bilateral floral symmetry and the morphology of nectar spurs?" https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

BIG PROJECTS. "The 5,000 insect genome project and the 1000 plant transcriptome project may have great potential for the understanding of pollinator-plant evolution. The scale of these projects reflects the orders of magnitude reduction in costs of sequencing, and they include the majority of model and non-model organisms of active interest around the world, including representatives from more than half (over 250) of all angiosperm plant families, and multiple representatives from all (approximately 30) major insect orders." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

FLORAL FITNESS LANDSCAPE. "Flowers thus exist in exceedingly complex fitness landscapes, in which a large number of traits might all affect individual success, as well as the dynamics of speciation and plant-pollinator coevolution." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

ONE GENE, MANY PHENOTYPES. "Many flower traits are subject to extensive pleiotropies; for example, pigments that contribute to flower coloration are also used in other parts of the plant where they can have multiple important functions." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

AVOIDING PREDATOR ATTRACTION. "A further challenge for plants is that some floral traits that are attractive to pollinators can also be of interest to herbivores, and in some cases, flowering plants may have the dual problem of attracting pollinators while deterring the same species in larval stages." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

POLLINATOR SELECTION. "Flower structures can be used to limit the type of visitor to some extent, but such limitation is typically not absolute. In addition, flowers can attempt to obtain some pollinator specificity by using advertising signals that appeal only to certain pollinators and not others. Colors, patterns, scents and even acoustic or electrostatic cues are all known to affect the behavior of different pollinators in different ways." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

LUCK IN THE BIRDS AND BEES BUSINESS. "However, there are peculiar challenges that come with such an unusual sex life. Many animals, such as bees, butterflies, flies, birds and bats, might be opportunistically interested in nectar carbohydrates, and plants cannot know or see which ones are in the vicinity, nor can they accept or reject a visitor. They can only offer their commodities to a diverse army of potential visitors from where they stand, and try their luck." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

SURROGATE PARTNERS. "This means that the morphology of angiosperm sex organs (flowers), rather than fitting those of the opposite sex, must generate a lock-and-key fit with the animals that visit them. These visitors do not normally come for sex; instead they are paid for their services, typically by means of sugary nectar or surplus pollen. Plants advertise these rewards with showy displays to assist pollinators in finding them." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn

SEXUAL MESSENGERS. "Plants are immobile, and therefore they cannot choose their own sex partners. To cope with this handicap, several lineages of plants have invented a trick to facilitate the directed transfer of gametes: harnessing animals as go-betweens. This is known in some gymnosperms and even mosses, but it is in the angiosperms where animal pollination is most commonly encountered and where, in many cases, it has evolved exquisite complexity." https://lnkd.in/dHD-ddW View in LinkedIn