Digest: Shape-shifting in Solanaceae flowers: The influence of pollinators

摘要

Aside from climate, plant-pollinator interactions are thought to be one of the main drivers of diversification in tropical plant lineages (Fig. 1; Gentry 1982; Pérez-Escobar et al. 2017). It has been argued that the great variation in angiosperm flowers is largely influenced by pollinator-mediated selection (Sauquet et al. 2017), a force that has also been linked with diversification of large groups within the flowering plants, such as orchids (Pérez-Escobar et al. 2017).Micro-evolutionary studies aimed at understanding mechanisms underpinning changes in observed phenotypes have clearly demonstrated that pollinator shifts are strongly correlated with changes in floral traits (e.g., Aquilegia; Whittall and Hodges 2007). The importance of pollinator-mediated selection in driving divergence at a macro-evolutionary scale, however, remains unclear.