Abstract
BackgroundAnthocyanins are the primary source of colour in flowers and also accumulate in vegetative tissues, where they have multiple protective roles traditionally attributed to early compounds of the metabolic pathway (flavonols, flavones, etc.). Petal-specific loss of anthocyanins in petals allows plants to escape from the negative pleiotropic effects of flavonoid and anthocyanins loss in vegetative organs, where they perform a plethora of essential functions. Herein, we investigate the degree of pleiotropy at the biochemical scale in a pink-white flower colour polymorphism in the shore campion, Silene littorea. We report the frequencies of pink and white individuals across 21 populations and underlying biochemical profiles of three flower colour variants: anthocyanins present in all tissues (pink petals), petal-specific loss of anthocyanins (white petals), and loss of anthocyanins in all tissues (white petals).ResultsIndividuals lacking anthocyanins only in petals represent a stable polymorphism in two populations at the northern edge of the species range (mean frequency 8–21%). Whereas, individuals lacking anthocyanins in the whole plant were found across the species range, yet always at very low frequencies (< 1%). Biochemically, the flavonoids detected were anthocyanins and flavones; in pigmented individuals, concentrations of flavones were 14–56× higher than anthocyanins across tissues with differences of > 100× detected in leaves. Loss of anthocyanin pigmentation, either in petals or in the whole plant, does not influence the ability of these phenotypes to synthesize flavones, and this pattern was congruent among all sampled populations.ConclusionsWe found that all colour variants showed similar flavone profiles, either in petals or in the whole plant, and only the flower colour variant with anthocyanins in photosynthetic tissues persists as a stable flower colour polymorphism. These findings suggest that anthocyanins in photosynthetic tissues, not flavonoid intermediates, are the targets of non-pollinator mediated selection.
Highlights
Anthocyanins are the primary source of colour in flowers and accumulate in vegetative tissues, where they have multiple protective roles traditionally attributed to early compounds of the metabolic pathway
Flavonoid identification and composition in each plant tissue Five anthocyanins and 21 flavones were identified in petals, as well as four anthocyanins and 19 flavones in photosynthetic tissues (Additional file 4: Table S3)
This pattern of anthocyanin and flavone production in all phenotypes was congruent in the distant polymorphic and nonpolymorphic populations. These results suggest that anthocyanin accumulation in photosynthetic tissues are directly or indirectly involved in petal color polymorphism persistence
Summary
Anthocyanins are the primary source of colour in flowers and accumulate in vegetative tissues, where they have multiple protective roles traditionally attributed to early compounds of the metabolic pathway (flavonols, flavones, etc.). Flower color has been considered as an adaptive trait for pollinator attraction [22], but underlying pigments have other functions, especially in vegetative tissues. Anthocyanins are the most common plant pigment that color flowers, conferring orange, red, pink and blue colors [23] that attract diverse functional groups of pollinators [22, 24]. If the loss of anthocyanins is confined to the flowers (usually in petals), the rest of the plant can produce anthocyanins and reduce any negative pleiotropic effects in other tissues [29, 30], whereas anthocyanins-lacking individuals in the whole plant potentially grow and reproduce, but frequently exhibit fitness disadvantages that seem to explain their scarcity in the wild [31,32,33] (see Additional file 1: Table S1)
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