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AOBPreview originally published online on February 14, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 103(9):1557-1566; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp032
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Annals of Botany issue: Special Issue: Plant-Pollinator Interactions [View the issue table of contents]

Using phenotypic manipulations to study multivariate selection of floral trait associations

Diane R. Campbell*

Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA

* For correspondence. E-mail drcampbe{at}uci.edu

Received: 27 October 2008    Returned for revision: 3 December 2008    Accepted: 8 January 2009    Published electronically: 14 February 2009

Background: A basic theme in the study of plant–pollinator interactions is that pollinators select not just for single floral traits, but for associations of traits. Responses of pollinators to sets of traits are inherent in the idea of pollinator syndromes. In its most extreme form, selection on a suite of traits can take the form of correlational selection, in which a response to one trait depends on the value of another, thereby favouring floral integration. Despite the importance of selection for combinations of traits in the evolution of flowers, evidence is relatively sparse and relies mostly on observational approaches.

Scope: Here, methods for measuring selection on multivariate suites of floral traits are presented, and the studies to date are reviewed. It is argued that phenotypic manipulations present a powerful, but rarely used, approach to teasing apart the separate and combined effects of particular traits. The approach is illustrated with data from studies of alpine plants in Colorado and New Zealand, and recommendations are made about several features of the design of such experiments.

Conclusions: Phenotypic manipulations of two or more traits in combination provide a direct way of testing for selection of floral trait associations. Such experiments will be particularly valuable if rooted in hypotheses about differences between types of pollinators and tied to a proposed evolutionary history.

Key words: Colour, correlational selection, experiment, floral integration, multivariate selection, phenotypic manipulation, pollination syndrome, pollinator visitation


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