Geographic mosaics of fly pollinators with divergent color preferences drive landscape-scale structuring of flower color in Daisy communities

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dc.contributor.authorEllis, Allan G.en_ZA
dc.contributor.authorAnderson, Bruceen_Za
dc.contributor.authorKemp, Jurene E.en_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2023-04-25T12:32:47Z
dc.date.available2023-04-25T12:32:47Z
dc.date.issued2021-02-01
dc.descriptionCITATION: Ellis AG, Anderson B and Kemp JE (2021) Geographic Mosaics of Fly Pollinators With Divergent Color Preferences Drive Landscape-Scale Structuring of Flower Color in Daisy Communities. Front. Plant Sci. 12:617761. doi.10.3389/fpls.2021.617761en_ZA
dc.descriptionThe original publication is available at: frontiersin.orgen_ZA
dc.description.abstractThe 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 affect the detectability of different colored flowers. Different bee-fly pollinators dominated in both community types so that largely non-overlapping pollinator distributions were strongly associated with different flower colors. Visual modeling demonstrated that orange and white-flowered species are distinguishable in fly vision, and choice experiments demonstrated strongly divergent color preferences. We found that the dominant pollinator in orange communities has a strong spontaneous preference for orange flowers, which was not altered by conditioning. Similarly, the dominant pollinator in white communities exhibited an innate preference for white flowers. Although detectability of white flowers varied across soil types, background contrast did not alter color preferences. These findings demonstrate that landscape-level flower color turnover across Namaqua daisy communities is likely shaped by a strong qualitative geographic mosaic of bee-fly pollinators with divergent color preferences. This is an unexpected result given the classically generalist pollination phenotype of daisies. However, because of the dominance of single fly pollinator species within communities, and the virtual absence of bees as pollinators, we suggest that Namaqua daisies function as pollination specialists despite their generalist phenotypes, thus facilitating differentiation of flower color by pollinator shifts across the fly pollinator mosaic.en_ZA
dc.description.versionPublisher’s versionen_ZA
dc.format.extent15 pages : illustrations (some color)en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationEllis AG, Anderson B and Kemp JE (2021) Geographic Mosaics of Fly Pollinators With Divergent Color Preferences Drive Landscape-Scale Structuring of Flower Color in Daisy Communities. Front. Plant Sci. 12:617761.en_ZA
dc.identifier.issn1664-462X (online)en_ZA
dc.identifier.otherdoi.10.3389/fpls.2021.617761en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/126827
dc.language.isoen_ZAen_ZA
dc.publisherFrontiers Mediaen_ZA
dc.rights.holderAuthors retain copyrighten_ZA
dc.subjectAsteraceae (Compositae) -- Africa, Southern -- Geographical distributionen_ZA
dc.subjectDipteraen_ZA
dc.subjectFlowers -- Color -- South Africa -- Namaqualanden_ZA
dc.subjectGeographic mosaics of pollinatorsen_ZA
dc.subjectGreater Cape floristic regionen_ZA
dc.subjectPlant-pollinator relationshipsen_ZA
dc.subjectSensory driveen_ZA
dc.subjectDaisy species -- South Africa -- Namaqualanden_ZA
dc.titleGeographic mosaics of fly pollinators with divergent color preferences drive landscape-scale structuring of flower color in Daisy communitiesen_ZA
dc.typeArticleen_ZA
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