Intersexual mimicry and flowering phenology facilitate pollination in a dioecious habitat specialist species, Myristica fatua (Myristicaceae)

Krishna, Shivani; Somanathan, Hema

doi:10.1007/s11258-018-0875-6

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Begonia ; Fig. 3C and D ), gynoecia of rewardless pistillate flowers closely resemble different parts of the rewarding staminate flowers (such as the androecium or petals; Bawa 1980 ; Schemske and Agren 1995 ; Ghosh and Pal 2017 ; Krishna and Somanathan 2018 ). Although only circumstantial evidence, the close correspondence between different structures in the two morphs suggests that they have evolved to deceive pollinators.…”

Section: When Is Providing or Withholding Information An Adaptation?mentioning

confidence: 86%

Intraspecific relationships between floral signals and rewards with implications for plant fitness

Essenberg

2021

AoB PLANTS

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Within-species variation in traits such as petal size or color often provides reliable information to pollinators about the rewards offered to them by flowers. In spite of potential disadvantages of allowing pollinators to discriminate against less-rewarding flowers, examples of informative floral signals are diverse in form and widely distributed across plant taxa, apparently having evolved repeatedly in different lineages. Although hypotheses about the adaptive value of providing reward information have been proposed and tested in a few cases, a unified effort to understand the evolutionary mechanisms favoring informative floral signals has yet to emerge. This review describes the diversity of ways in which floral signals can be linked with floral rewards within plant species and discusses the constraints and selective pressures on floral signal-reward relationships. It focuses particularly on how information about floral rewards can influence pollinator behavior and how those behavioral changes may, in turn, affect plant fitness, selecting either for providing or withholding reward information. Most of the hypotheses about the evolution of floral signal-reward relationships are, as yet, untested, and the review identifies promising research directions for addressing these considerable gaps in knowledge. The advantages and disadvantages of sharing floral reward information with pollinators likely play an important role in floral trait evolution, and opportunities abound to further our understanding of this neglected aspect of floral signaling.

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Section: When Is Providing or Withholding Information An Adaptation?mentioning

confidence: 86%

Intraspecific relationships between floral signals and rewards with implications for plant fitness

Essenberg

2021

AoB PLANTS

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“…Most studies of intersexual mimicry tested the pollinator preference for deceit cues (Bawa, 1980;Willson & Ågren, 1989;Schemske & Ågren, 1995;Soler et al, 2012), yet fewer studies have tested both the pollinator ability to discriminate against non-rewarding females and the pollination limitations. These studies have been found for Begonia involucrata (Ågren & Schemske, 1991) and Begonia urophylla (Le Corff et al, 1998) in the family Begoniaceae and Myristica fatua (Krishna & Somanathan, 2018) belonging to the family Myristicaceae. Astonishingly, pollination limitation to M. fatua and B. urophylla was not obvious, and to B. involucrata, a low value of pollination limitation (L = 28) was observed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Accuracy in discrimination was not a strict requirement and varied between individual pollinators (Chittka et al, 2003). Although mimicry and deceit could be discriminated by pollinators, they might still ensure a portion of "accidental" visits on female flowers and cause "mistake" pollination (or "chance" pollination) to occur at low frequencies (Krishna & Somanathan, 2018). Therefore, it can be deduced that, if more pollinators were visiting the population, visits to female flowers would increase and the consequence of pollinator discrimination could be mitigated, reflecting a lower pollination limitation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intersexual mimicry and imperfect deceit of a threatened aquatic herb Ottelia acuminata

Yang

Sun

et al. 2020

J of Sytematics Evolution

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Mimicry of non-rewarding flowers to rewarding flowers has been accepted as a strategy to improve pollination success in angiosperms. It has been proposed that this mechanism depends on whether potential pollinators can discriminate between the flowers. In this study, the intersexual mimicry and deceit pollination were studied in a threatened dioecious aquatic herb, Ottelia acuminata. Its female flowers resemble male flowers in morphology and odor compounds, to avoid discrimination by pollinators and outcompete male flowers in attracting the pollinators using stronger scents and bigger flowers. However, an obvious visit bias of its pollinator (Apis cerana) to male flowers was detected, suggesting that bees can distinguish the rewarding males from non-rewarding females. Although the deceit was not successful, pollination was not seriously undermined because pollen limitation was found to be low in the sampled natural population. We speculate that, due to "accidental" visits on female flowers and "mistake" pollinations, pollen limitation could be mitigated by a high frequency of pollen donors, and is correlated with the size and sex ratio of a population. Ottelia acuminata is a threatened dioecious aquatic herb. We suggest that developing multistakeholder coalitions should be encouraged to save the threatened edible and ornamental plant species in China. We hope this study could provide new insights into understanding of the role of intersexual mimicry in other flowering plants.

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Beyond bees and butterflies: The role of beetles in pollination system

Muinde,

Katumo

2024

Journal for Nature Conservation

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Intersexual mimicry and flowering phenology facilitate pollination in a dioecious habitat specialist species, Myristica fatua (Myristicaceae)

Cited by 4 publications

References 61 publications

Intraspecific relationships between floral signals and rewards with implications for plant fitness

Intraspecific relationships between floral signals and rewards with implications for plant fitness

Intersexual mimicry and imperfect deceit of a threatened aquatic herb Ottelia acuminata

Beyond bees and butterflies: The role of beetles in pollination system

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