In late summer, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, seas of sunflowers bloom in fields and farms. The flowers, which grow at the top of long, one- to three-meter stems, appear to us to be somewhat uniform, with bright yellow rings of petals adorning brown irises. But bees and other pollinators—which can perceive ultraviolet colors—instead see bullseyes that are darker in the middle and lighter at the edges.
According to a study published January 18 in eLife, these patterns not only help attract pollinators, the compounds that create them also appear to regulate water loss—potentially helping sunflowers adapt to their environments. The researchers also found a single gene region responsible for the size of the bullseye.
“It shows how smart evolutionary adaptation can be, to use the same trait to do two very different things that are both very important for the plant,” Marco Todesco, a plant geneticist at the ...
