can pollinator behavior drive ecological speciation in flowering plants?
Gegear RJ; Burns JG Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G5, Canada. robert.gegear@umassmed.edu Biologists have long assumed that pollinator behavior is an important force in angiosperm speciation, yet there is surprisingly little direct evidence that floral preferences in pollinators can drive floral divergence and the evolution of reproductive (ethological) isolation between incipient plant species. In this study, we expose computer-generated plant populations with a wide variation in flower color to selection by live and virtual hummingbirds and bumblebees and track evolutionary changes in flower color over multiple generations. Flower color, which was derived from the known genetic architecture and phenotypic variance of naturally occurring plant species pollinated by both groups, evolved in simulations through a genetic algorithm in which pollinator preference determined changes in flower color between gene
