Geographic Mosaics of Fly Pollinators With Divergent Color Preferences Drive Landscape-Scale Structuring of Flower Color in Daisy Communities.

ABSTRACT: The striking variation in flower color across and within Angiosperm species is often attributed to divergent selection resulting from geographic mosaics of pollinators with different color preferences. Despite the importance of pollinator mosaics in driving floral divergence, the distributions of pollinators and their color preferences are seldom quantified. The extensive mass-flowering displays of annual daisy species in Namaqualand, South Africa, are characterized by striking color convergence within communities, but also color turnover within species and genera across large geographic scales. We aimed to determine whether shifts between orange and white-flowered daisy communities are driven by the innate color preferences of different pollinators or by soil color, which can potentially

SUBMITTER: Ellis AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7882612 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature