Honesty, reliability, and information content of floral signals

Casper J van der Kooi; Lora Reuvers; Johannes Spaethe

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107093

Honesty, reliability, and information content of floral signals

iScience. 2023 Jun 10;26(7):107093. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107093. eCollection 2023 Jul 21.

Authors

Casper J van der Kooi^{1

2}, Lora Reuvers¹, Johannes Spaethe²

Affiliations

¹ Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
² Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.

Abstract

Plants advertise their presence by displaying attractive flowers, which pollinators use to locate a floral reward. Understanding how floral traits scale with reward status lies at the heart of pollination biology, because it connects the different interests of plants and pollinators. Studies on plant phenotype-reward associations often use different terms and concepts, which limits developing a broader synthesis. Here, we present a framework with definitions of the key aspects of plant phenotype-reward associations and provide measures to quantify them across different species and studies. We first distinguish between cues and signals, which are often used interchangeably, but have different meanings and are subject to different selective pressures. We then define honesty, reliability, and information content of floral cues/signals and provide ways to quantify them. Finally, we discuss the ecological and evolutionary factors that determine flower phenotype-reward associations, how context-dependent and temporally variable they are, and highlight promising research directions.

Keywords: Plant Biology; Plant ecology; Plant evolution.

Publication types

Review