Wildfires create shifting pollinator pressures that preserve two flower shapes
García Y.
Pollinators
If you've ever wondered why some wild plant populations stubbornly keep two different flower forms instead of settling on one, this shows that disturbances like fire can be the hidden referee keeping that variety alive.
A South African plant called Lapeirousia anceps grows two distinct flower shapes within the same population. Researchers tracked the plant for years after wildfires and found that as the landscape recovers, different pollinators show up at different stages, favoring one flower shape then the other. That back-and-forth pressure from fire-driven habitat change is what keeps both flower forms around instead of one taking over.
Key Findings
Lapeirousia anceps maintains two floral phenotypes within a single population rather than diverging into separate populations
Post-fire succession predictably alters which pollinators are present, creating distinct 'pollination niches' over time
This fluctuating selection pressure across succession stages is sufficient to maintain floral polymorphism long-term, based on a long-term field study
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists found that wildfires reshape which pollinators visit a South African flower species, and this shifting pressure is what keeps two different flower shapes alive in the same population instead of one winning out.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Digest: Fire-driven pollination niches maintain floral polymorphism.
How temporal environmental variation influences evolutionary divergence and the maintenance of phenotypic diversity remains poorly understood. McCarren et al. (2026) addressed this question by exam...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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Lapeirousia anceps, also known as long kabong, is a species of geophyte in the genus Lapeirousia. It is native in the Cape provinces in South Africa.