Flowers born to seduce birds

The different shapes of tropical flowers, from blooming flowers to elongated pipes, are to help birds and bats easily put the beak in to pollinate flowers. It is the diversity of birds and bats that encourages flowers to grow in sizes to match the creature's beak or nose.

Lead researcher Nathan Muchhala at the University of Miami said flowers seem to respond to anything that exists and do all the best to spread pollination. Birds and bats may also have changed their body shape to match the food source, but flowers have made this more positive.

"Basically, flowers are decisive in evolution. Creatures often specialize in something, like having a wide or narrow mouth, but they have to trade in order to become better in some way. ".

Biologists have long observed that flower pollinators, like birds and bats, seem to have different preferences with different shapes of flowers. However, there is no evidence to support the idea that flower diversity is a direct result of meeting pollinator needs.

(Photo: LiveScience)

To test it out, Muchhala and the group captured some bile-sucking bats and hummingbirds in the rainforest in Ecuador and brought in contact with a variety of fake flowers containing honey.

The results show that it is extremely important to match the flower and the pollinator to successful pollination. Hummingbirds with long and pointed beaks aim at more elongated shaped flowers. On the other hand, larger bats reach flowers with wide mouth rings.

"Certainly there is some degree of co-evolution in which birds and bile-sucking bats have longer beaks than others. However, flowers seem to evolve much faster , " Muchhala said.

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