PDA

View Full Version : How can a plant mimic an insects body


andyhall
Mar 31, 2011, 03:16 PM
Plants often mimic female insects bodies to attract males to their flowers to pass on pollen so that the plant can be cross pollinated how does the plant do this when it doesn't have any vision

Wondergirl
Mar 31, 2011, 03:42 PM
Google is your friend.

Plants don't need vision.

Celebrating Wildflowers - Plant Pollination Strategies - Mimicry (http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/plantstrategies/mimicry.shtml)

jcaron2
Mar 31, 2011, 08:36 PM
I didn't check out Wondergirl's link; it might say the same thing as I'm about to say:

According to the theory of evolution and natural selection, random genetic variations among flowers happen from time to time. If a particular variation happens to make the plant look a little more like a female insect, that plant will be slightly more likely to be visited by the male insects, so it's a got a small advantage in propagating its improved genetic code versus its normal sibling flowers. Hence, there's a chance that after a while all of the plants will develop this new characteristic. Over the course of thousands or millions of years, the species can grow to very accurately mimic a female insect. This happens not because the plant could "see" what the females looked like or was capable of changing its own structure to mimic them, but rather because the random variations that made it look more and more like a female insect simply gave it a competitive advantage over the plants that didn't look so convincing. So really, it's the male insects who can see and who inadvertently "sculpt" the plant into a decoy.