It's Not Easy Being Blue: Are There Olfactory and Visual Trade-Offs in Plant Signalling?

ABSTRACT: Understanding the signals used by plants to attract seed disperses is a pervasive quest in evolutionary and sensory biology. Fruit size, colour, and odour variation have long been discussed in the controversial context of dispersal syndromes targeting olfactory-oriented versus visually-oriented foragers. Trade-offs in signal investment could impose important physiological constraints on plants, yet have been largely ignored. Here, we measure the reflectance and volatile organic compounds of a community of Malagasy plants and our results indicate that extant plant signals may represent a trade-off between olfactory and chromatic signals. Blue pigments are the most visually-effective--blue is a colour that is visually salient to all known seed dispersing animals within the study system. Addi

SUBMITTER: Valenta K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4482676 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature