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Evolutionary ecology

Bedazzled by flowers

Nature volume 394, pages 835–836 (1998)Cite this article

Human eyes are dazzled by the diversity of flower colours, and early biologists naturally interpreted colour as a signal for other eyes — those of pollinating insects. A close look at flowers reveals surprising additional detail. Petals of the snapdragon Antirrhinum majus, for example, have a remarkable sparkling sheen caused by epidermal cells with a conical surface. In a recent issue of Heredity, Glover and Martin1 argue that this sparkle adds to background flower colour in bedazzling and attracting bees, and their study is a welcome addition to a surprisingly small number of experiments that have explored the great diversity of floral features in higher plants.

Glover and Martin studied individual and compound effects of petal sparkle and overall colour. They used mutants at the mixta gene locus, which cause epidermal cells to develop a flat surface, and the nivea locus, which confer white rather than the normal magenta petals. The authors planted wild type, single mutant and double mutant snapdragons in a garden exposed to bees, and discovered that both mixta mutants (with dull petals) and nivea mutants (with white petals) suffer lower reproductive fitness, measured as the proportion of flowers that produce fruit.

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Figure 1: How bees perceive colour.
Figure 2: Reflectance spectra of Antirrhinum majus.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, 92521, California, USA

    Nick Waser

  2. Zoologie II, Biozentrum, Am Hubland, D-97074, Würzburg, Germany

    Lars Chittka

Authors
  1. Nick Waser
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  2. Lars Chittka
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Waser, N., Chittka, L. Bedazzled by flowers. Nature 394, 835–836 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/29657

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