Abstract

Many flowers display a floral colour pattern comprising at least two components, a peripheral large area attracting flower visitors from some distance and a small contrastingly coloured area known as floral guide. The talk focuses on the comparison of two kinds of floral guides and its key components colour, size, shape and gloss. The common yellow and UV-absorbing floral guides of bee-pollinated flowers are mimicking pollen and stamens, elicit innate responses in bees and hoverflies and impede the discrimination between different flower morphs and flowering phases. Blackish floral guides have various context-depending functions including reduction of floral handling time, attraction of pollinating beetles and flies by mimicking potential mating partners, deterrence of gall midges by mimicking galls, signalling of nectar reward, but mostly unknown.