Floral Scent Differentiation as a Mechanism for Pollinator Partitioning in the Genus Anthurium (Araceae)

Floral scents are considered critical for the attraction and consistency of insect pollinators. In Neotropical forests, where multiple species of the same genus co-occur, and therefore compete for pollinator services, floral scents that are readily distinguished from the scent of competing species can encourage individual pollinators to exclusively visit conspecific flowers in succession. This project will compare the floral visitor and pollinator ensemble of several Anthurium species (Araceae family) co-occurring in a tropical forest community in Colombia, as well as identify the volatile compounds released by Anthurium flowers. We aim to understand how pollinator preferences, in particular floral scent preferences by bee pollinators, could potentially influence patterns of Anthurium species diversification, explain how different Anthurium species are associated with particular species of pollinators through their floral scents, and understand how many times these interactions have changed over evolutionary history using a phylogeny reconstructed with next generation sequencing data. The living Anthurium collections housed in the research greenhouses at the Missouri Botanical Garden will be used to greatly expand our sample size beyond the species encountered in the field.

Publications

Mendez-Urbano, F.; Sierra-Giraldo, J.A.; Carlsen, M.M.; Rodriguez-Rey, G. and Castano-Rubiano, N. (2022). Anthurium caldasii: a new species of Araceae from Colombia and its phylogenetic relationships with other black-spathed Anthurium species. Brittonia. DOI: 10.1007/s12228-022-09722-y

Research Team

Mónica M. Carlsen, Missouri Botanical Garden
Nathan Muchhala, University of Missouri – Saint Louis (Biology)
Gerardo Camilo, Saint Louis University (Biology)
Edward Spevak, Saint Louis Zoo