This paper presents an exhaustive review of the current knowledge on pollination of Araceae genera with bisexual flowers. All available studies on floral morphology, flowering sequence, floral scent, floral thermogenesis, floral visitors, and pollinators were carefully examined, with emphasis on the species-rich genera Anthurium Schott, Monstera Adans., and Spathiphyllum Schott. Genera with bisexual flowers are among the early-diverging lineages in Araceae, but present adaptations in their floral ecology to a great variety of pollination vectors, such as bees, beetles, flies, and, unusually, wind. These clades have developed highly derived pollination systems, involving the use of floral scent as a reward. We conclude that floral scent chemistry plays a key role in the pollination biology of the plants and that, in some genera, reproductive isolation through variation in the emitted floral volatile compounds may have been the decisive factor in the speciation processes of sympatric species.
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13 March 2019
A Review on the Pollination of Aroids with Bisexual Flowers
Pedro Díaz Jiménez,
Heiko Hentrich,
Pedro Adrián Aguilar-Rodríguez,
Thorsten Krömer,
Marion Chartier,
M. Cristina MacSwiney G.,
Marc Gibernau
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Anthurium
Araceae
bee pollination
beetle pollination
floral scent
fly pollination
Monstera