Meeting Abstract

35.5  Friday, Jan. 4  Exploring plant-pollinator interactions using 3D printed flowers CAMPOS, E.O.*; BRADSHAW, H.D.; DANIEL, T.L.; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Washington, Seattle eocampos@uw.edu

Pollination syndromes are suites of floral traits postulated to reflect convergent evolution among distantly related species due to selection by a shared guild of pollinators. We used a four-parameter geometric model of flower shape to construct artificial flowers using computer-aided design software and a 3D printer. The four shape parameters describe corolla curvature, corolla width, flower length, and nectary radius. Our goal is to use these flowers to test whether the shape of artificial flower populations can evolve in response to selective pressures induced by real flower-foraging animals in an experimental evolution study. To assess whether pollinator foraging performance is affected by variation in “floral” shape, we allowed individuals of the hawk moth Manduca sexta to forage freely on dimorphic arrays of 16 artificial flowers. The two morphs in an array differed in only one of the four shape parameters. We find that if the nectary radius is too large (2.5 mm), M. sexta is able to exploit artificial flowers equally well regardless of the values of other shape parameters (mean number of flowers of each morph emptied per foraging trial: 6.0 ± 0.8 SE; 4.9 ± 0.9 SE; p > 0.34). But if nectary radius is reduced to 1 mm, then flower curvature has a significant effect on foraging performance (7.6 ± 0.2; 2.1 ± 0.4; p < 0.01). These results suggest that artificial flowers could experience a selection differential based on shape as a result of visitation by moths.