In plants, the shapes, colours, and patterns of flowers like the lily have evolved to optimise insect pollination (other plants may be pollinated by wind, birds, or bats).
If floral spectral signals have evolved to enhance discrimination by a pollinating animal, rapid reflectance change should occur near wavelengths of maximum discrimination, as indicated by a Δλ/λ function (Fig. 1).
These flowers have evolved to arouse the passions of male bees, which inadvertently pollinate the flowers as they engage in hopeless attempts to copulate with the pretty petal.
By hanging, the flower caters to the hummingbird's unusual skills – something the plant may have evolved to do because of the bird's reliable pollinating habits.
Female fig wasps have evolved to search for their specific fig species, burrow inside the unripe fig, and lay their eggs while simultaneously pollinating the fig "flower"... keep reading.
Monogamy May Have Evolved to Prevent Infanticide.
A directional bias could also reflect a historical change in abundance of pollinator guilds, e.g., nectar-feeding birds might have evolved later than pollinating bees, or geographical variation in the distribution of pollinators caused by environmental heterogeneity, e.g., climatic factors that vary with altitude [ 21].
A larger idea that provided the impetus for the module was that different species of the same plant have evolved different pollinator syndromes such that coevolution has occurred between plants and the species that pollinate them.
In addition, when plants, birds and insects have evolved en suite to sync their hatching, blooming or migrating patterns, individual changes can leave nestlings hatching too late to dine on their favored swarming insects, or flowers blooming ahead of the arrival of the birds they need to pollinate them.
