Abstract
The immense diversity of floral characteristics (flower shape, size and color, floral odors) is commonly explained by the shared evolutionary history between plants and pollinators. The many species of pollinator are thought to have played a major role in shaping the evolution of these traits through their behavior and morphology. For example, an innate preference in insects for a certain range of colors or for certain odorous molecules should strongly favor plants producing that color or odor in their flowers. The resulting selection pressures can then shape the evolution of these floral traits in lineages. Although this scenario is widely accepted, little is known about how much of the influence of pollinators is related to other evolutionary phenomena.
In this seminar, I will use some of our work to show which experimental approaches enable us to understand in detail how traits evolve under the influence of pollinators. In particular, I will show why, when a plant species is composed of male and female individuals, flowers are not similar between sexes. I will also present results on a marked variation in odor composition between plants from different regions, while the pollinator species seems to be the same everywhere.
