Different points of view in a changing world: The tobacco tree flowers through the eyes of its pollinators in native and non-native ranges

ANTONELLA COSTA; VALERIA PAIARO; MARCELA MORÉ; EUGENIA DREWNIAK; ANINA COETZEE

Congreso; SCAPE 2020; 2020

Scandinavian Association for Pollination Ecology

Different pollinators show distinct visual and cognitive abilities that can influence floralcolour evolution. Nicotiana glauca is a South American hummingbird-pollinated plant that hasbecome a significant invasive of semi-arid parts of the world, where it is visited by localanimals like sunbirds in South Africa or diurnal hawkmoths in Spain. We measured corollareflectance spectra from native and non-native populations encompassing the differentpollination contexts. Flower colour loci were represented in the visual space of tetrachromaticbirds and trichromatic hawkmoths. Variation in corolla reflectance spectra was revealed, bothacross pollination contexts and among populations. From the pollinators? point of view(hummingbirds, sunbirds and hawkmoths), flowers from native populations were, in general,significantly discriminated from those of the non-native populations, which mostly were notdiscriminated as different from each other. We discuss our findings under the hypothesis ofpollinator-mediated colour selection and alternative evolutionary processes that may occurduring invasions.