Abstract
Pollinators tend to be preferentially attracted to large floral displays that may comprise more than one plant in a patch. Attracting pollinators thus not only benefits individuals investing in advertising, but also other plants in a patch through a ‘magnet’ effect. Accordingly, there could be an indirect fitness advantage to greater investment in costly floral displays by plants in kin-structured groups than when in groups of unrelated individuals. Here, we seek evidence for this strategy by manipulating relatedness in groups of the plant Moricandia moricandioides, an insect-pollinated herb that typically grows in patches. As predicted, individuals growing with kin, particularly at high density, produced larger floral displays than those growing with non-kin. Investment in attracting pollinators was thus moulded by the presence and relatedness of neighbours, exemplifying the importance of kin recognition in the evolution of plant reproductive strategies.
Highlights
Pollinators tend to be preferentially attracted to large floral displays that may comprise more than one plant in a patch
We should expect individuals growing with kin to invest more in their floral display than those growing with unrelated neighbours
Arabidopsis thaliana responded to the identity of neighbours by increasing lateral root growth in the presence of root exudates from non-kin plants compared with kin[28]
Summary
Pollinators tend to be preferentially attracted to large floral displays that may comprise more than one plant in a patch. Plants growing in groups of relatives should cooperate in attracting pollinators more than individuals in groups of unrelated neighbours, because inclusive fitness is enhanced by benefits conferred upon kin[10] This sort of pre-mating cooperation is well known in animals[11]. A trait with important effects on competitive ability[29, 30], has been found to vary as a function of the relatedness of neighbouring seeds: in Plantago asiatica, seeds accelerated their emergence in the presence of a competing species only if accompanied by kin[31] Whereas all these examples involve responses to the context of resource competition, we ought to expect reproductive traits such as floral display to depend on neighbour relatedness. As shown for several plant competitive traits[7,8,9], and proposed by Hamilton[10] for reproductive traits, kin discrimination and kin selection may play a role in the evolution of plant-pollinator signalling
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