Introduction to the Red-Flower Project

Plants are often overlooked as the background against which all other life is performed.  And yet, the sessile nature of the plant community requires that these organisms act most dynamically, adapting complex and changing responses to their environment.  Perhaps the most convincing evidence for this is the diversity and abundance of flowering plants, which host incredible variations in both floral display and the animal interactions that they elicit.

As biologists,  we are interested in understanding how the relationships between flowers and pollinators first evolved, and how these interactions continue to drive the evolution of floral traits.  We wonder how opposing pressures to prevent herbivory and also ensure pollination can combine to influence floral characteristics, and we question whether similar pressures and pollination strategies can produce convergent evolution of floral traits.

This project attempts to get at many of these questions by studying a group of unrelated flowers that share in common similar floral traits and a long biological history.  This group is characterized by having red flowers that bloom in early spring and emit unusual, musky odors.  Importantly, the flowers that we study are unlike most of their closest relatives and co-blooming plants, which bear white flowers and emit sweet odors.  By exploring the reproductive strategies of this red-flower guild, we hope to begin answering how flower characteristics evolve as functional responses to environmental pressures.  From here, we might begin to understand the context in which the first pollination systems evolved.