Differential pollinator importance contributes to flower colour variation along an elevational gradient.
Heinze J, van der Kooi CJ, Spaethe J
Pollinators
Next time you spot a wildflower changing color as you hike uphill, you're watching millions of years of pollinator pressure written in petals — the mountain itself is sorting which insects show up, and the flowers are keeping score.
Researchers studied a colorful windflower in Greece that comes in different shades depending on how high up the mountain it grows. They found that a type of beetle is about four times better at delivering pollen than honeybees, but these beetles only live at lower elevations. Higher up where beetles are absent, the flowers shifted color to better attract bees instead — showing that flower color isn't random, it tracks which pollinator actually gets the job done at each altitude.
Key Findings
Pygopleurus beetles delivered ~36% of maximum seed set per visit versus ~9.5% for honeybees — nearly 4× more effective per visit.
Beetle flower visits lasted an average of 56 seconds compared to just 2 seconds for honeybees.
Beetle pollinator importance (effectiveness × visitation frequency) declined with increasing elevation on Mount Olympus, while bee importance remained low but constant — creating an elevational flower color gradient.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Beetles are far more effective pollinators than bees for the windflower Anemone pavonina, but beetles disappear at high elevations — which is why the same species blooms red at low altitudes (to attract beetles) and shifts to other colors higher up (where bees take over).
Abstract Preview
Floral diversity is the hallmark of angiosperms, often shaped by pollinator-mediated selection when plants evolve traits that attract specific pollinator groups. Mediterranean red, bowl-shaped flow...
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Anemone is a genus of flowering plants in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. Plants of the genus are commonly called windflowers. They are native to the temperate and subtropical regions of all regions except Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica. The genus is closely related to several other g...