Garcia Jair E, Phillips Ryan D, Peter Craig I, Dyer Adrian G
Bio-Inspired Digital Sensing Laboratory (BIDS Lab), School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC, Australia.
Front Plant Sci. 2020 Nov 19;11:601700. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2020.601700. eCollection 2020.
Studying flower color evolution can be challenging as it may require several different areas of expertise, ranging from botany and ecology through to understanding color sensing of insects and thus how they perceive flower signals. Whilst studies often view plant-pollinator interactions from the plant's perspective, there is growing evidence from psychophysics studies that pollinators have their own complex decision making processes depending on their perception of color, viewing conditions and individual experience. Mimicry of rewarding flowers by orchids is a fascinating system for studying the pollinator decision making process, as rewarding model flowering plants and mimics can be clearly characterized. Here, we focus on a system where the rewardless orchid mimics the floral color of (Campanulaceae) to attract its pollinator species, a halictid bee. Using recently developed psychophysics principles, we explore whether the color perception of an insect observer encountering variable model and mimic flower color signals can help explain why species with non-rewarding flowers can exist in nature. Our approach involves the use of color discrimination functions rather than relying on discrimination thresholds, and the use of statistical distributions to model intraspecific color variations. Results show that whilst an experienced insect observer can frequently make accurate discriminations between mimic and rewarding flowers, intraspecific signal variability leads to overlap in the perceived color, which will frequently confuse an inexperienced pollinator. This new perspective provides an improved way to incorporate pollinator decision making into the complex field of plant-pollinator interactions.
研究花色进化可能具有挑战性，因为这可能需要多个不同领域的专业知识，从植物学和生态学到理解昆虫的颜色感知，进而了解它们如何感知花朵信号。虽然研究通常从植物的角度看待植物与传粉者的相互作用，但越来越多的心理物理学研究证据表明，传粉者有自己复杂的决策过程，这取决于它们对颜色、观察条件和个体经验的感知。兰花对有回报花朵的拟态是研究传粉者决策过程的一个迷人系统，因为有回报的模式开花植物和拟态植物可以被清晰地识别出来。在这里，我们关注一个系统，即无回报的兰花模仿风铃草科植物的花色以吸引其传粉者物种，一种隧蜂。利用最近发展的心理物理学原理，我们探究遇到可变的模式和拟态花朵颜色信号的昆虫观察者的颜色感知是否有助于解释为什么没有回报的花朵物种能够在自然界中存在。我们的方法包括使用颜色辨别函数而不是依赖辨别阈值，以及使用统计分布来模拟种内颜色变化。结果表明，虽然经验丰富的昆虫观察者通常能够准确地区分拟态花和有回报的花，但种内信号变异性导致感知颜色出现重叠，这常常会使缺乏经验的传粉者感到困惑。这种新观点为将传粉者决策纳入植物与传粉者相互作用这一复杂领域提供了一种更好的方法。
