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Flower colours along an alpine altitude gradient, seen through the eyes of fly and bee pollinators

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Abstract

Alpine flowers face multiple challenges in terms of abiotic and biotic factors, some of which may result in selection for certain colours at increasing altitude, in particular the changing pollinator species composition, which tends to move from bee-dominated at lower elevations to fly-dominated in high-alpine regions. To evaluate whether growing at altitude—and the associated change in the dominant pollinator groups present—has an effect on the colour of flowers, we analysed data collected from the Dovrefjell National Park in Norway. Unlike previous studies, however, we considered the flower colours according to ecologically relevant models of bee and fly colour vision and also their physical spectral properties independently of any colour vision system, rather than merely looking at human colour categories. The shift from bee to fly pollination with elevation might, according to the pollination syndrome hypothesis, lead to the prediction that flower colours should shift from more bee-blue and UV-blue flowers (blue/violet to humans, i.e. colours traditionally associated with large bee pollinators) at low elevations to more bee-blue-green and green (yellow and white to humans—colours often linked to fly pollination) flowers at higher altitude. However, although there was a slight increase in bee-blue-green flowers and a decrease in bee-blue flowers with increasing elevation, there were no statistically significant effects of altitude on flower colour as seen either by bees or by flies. Although flower colour is known to be constrained by evolutionary history, in this sample we also did not find evidence that phylogeny and elevation interact to determine flower colours in alpine areas.

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Acknowledgements

The raw data for this study were collected when LC worked under the auspices of the Institute of Neurobiology, Free University of Berlin. Financial support came from a Leibniz Award from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to R. Menzel. We wish to thank Simen Bretten for help with identification of the plants, and Neal Williams and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. SEJA was supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/Co-operative Award in Science and Engineering (CASE) studentship in association with Kew Enterprises (BBS/S/L/2005/12155A).

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  1. Research Centre for Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK

    Sarah E. J. Arnold & Lars Chittka

  2. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3AB, UK

    Vincent Savolainen

  3. Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot, Berks, SL5 7PY, UK

    Vincent Savolainen

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  1. Sarah E. J. Arnold
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Correspondence to Sarah E. J. Arnold.

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Handling editor: Neal Williams

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 1, 2 and 3.

Table 1 List of plant species analysed, including colour information (as seen by bees, and also humans, after categorising the flower colour into one of six human colours) and elevation of collection (in m a.s.l.)
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Table 2 Details of the rbcL sequences used to build the phylogenetic tree, including accession and citation details for the species providing rbcL sequences
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Table 3 Details of the ITS sequences used to discriminate species within genera
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Arnold, S.E.J., Savolainen, V. & Chittka, L. Flower colours along an alpine altitude gradient, seen through the eyes of fly and bee pollinators. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 3, 27–43 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-009-9056-9

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