Trade-off mitigation: a conceptual framework for understanding floral adaptation in multispecies interactions

Abstract

ABSTRACTExplanations of floral adaptation to diverse pollinator faunas have often invoked visitor‐mediated trade‐offs in which no intermediate, generalized floral phenotype is optimal for pollination success, i.e. fitness valleys are created. In such cases, plant species are expected to specialize on particular groups of flower visitors. Contrary to this expectation, it is commonly observed that flowers interact with various groups of visitors, while at the same time maintaining distinct phenotypes among ecotypes, subspecies, or congeners. This apparent paradox may be due to a gap in our understanding of how visitor‐mediated trade‐offs could affect floral adaptation. Here we provide a conceptual framework for analysing visitor‐mediated trade‐offs with the hope of stimulating empirical and theoretical studies to fill this gap. We propose two types of visitor‐mediated trade‐offs to address negative correlations among fitness contributions of different visitors: visitor‐mediated phenotypic trade‐offs (phenotypic trade‐offs) and visitor‐mediated opportunity trade‐offs (opportunity trade‐offs).Phenotypic trade‐offsoccur when different groups of visitors impose conflicting selection pressures on a floral trait. By contrast,opportunity trade‐offsemerge only when some visitors’ actions (e.g. pollen collection) remove opportunities for fitness contribution by more beneficial visitors. Previous studies have observed disruptive selection due tophenotypic trade‐offsless often than expected. In addition to existing explanations, we propose that some flowers have achieved ‘adaptive generalization’ by evolving features to avoid or eliminate the fitness valleys thatphenotypic trade‐offstend to produce. The literature suggests a variety of pathways to such ‘trade‐off mitigation’. Trade‐off mitigation may also evolve as an adaptation toopportunity trade‐offs. We argue that active exclusion, or floral specialization, can be viewed as a trade‐off mitigation, occurring only when flowers cannot otherwise avoid strongopportunity trade‐offs. These considerations suggest that an evolutionary strategy for trade‐off mitigation is achieved often by acquiring novel combinations of traits. Thus, phenotypic diversification of flowers through convergent evolution of certain trait combinations may have been enhanced not only through adaptive specialization for particular visitors, but also through adaptive generalization for particular visitor communities. Explorations of how visitor‐mediated trade‐offs explain the recurrent patterns of floral phenotypes may help reconcile the long‐lasting controversy on the validity of pollination syndromes.

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