Gloger's Rule For Animals Also Applies To Flowers

Saturday, January 10, 2015 - 15:20 in Biology & Nature

In 1833, Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger published his key observation that warm-blooded animals tend to be more heavily pigmented or darker the closer they live to the equator. This week, University of Pittsburgh researchers Matthew Koski and Tia-Lynn Ashman proved that the same phenomenon described by Gloger exists among flowers. One of the reasons investigators had not pursued proof of Gloger's rule in flowers is that pollinators, such as bees, don't see what we see when they look at a flower. They see in the ultraviolet as well as visible ranges. What appears bright yellow to a person can appear dark or patterned to a bee. read more

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