Digest: Extensive pollinator sharing does not promote character displacement in two orchid congeners

Abstract

The sharing of pollinators between closely related plant species may be detrimental to plant reproductive success. This predicts that natural selection should favor divergent traits that facilitate coexistence by niche partitioning. Testing this hypothesis in mixed versus pure sites of two pollinator-sharing orchid species, Joffard et al. found that one species had a shift in the timing of floral scent emission that did not match the shift in pollinator visitation. This raises further questions about the mechanisms driving floral trait evolution.