ArticleNature communications2016
Innate olfactory preferences for flowers matching proboscis length ensure optimal energy gain in a hawkmoth.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- From individuals to networks: The role of variation in plant-pollinator communities' responses to global change.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Review
- Identification of a gene conferring broad-spectrum orthotospovirus resistance in Solanaceae.Science advances · 2025Article
- Establishment and application of Agrobacterium-delivered CRISPR/Cas9 system for wild tobacco (Frontiers in plant science · 2024Article
- Wettability and morphology of proboscises interweave with hawkmoth evolutionary history.The Journal of experimental biology · 2023Article
- A signal-like role for floral humidity in a nocturnal pollination system.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Article
- Mutualist- and antagonist-mediated selection contribute to trait diversification of flowers.PeerJ · 2022Review
- Flight-Fecundity Trade-offs: A Possible Mechanistic Link in Plant-Herbivore-Pollinator Systems.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Moths sense but do not learn flower odors with their proboscis during flower investigation.The Journal of experimental biology · 2021Article
- Floral Scent Evolution in the GenusPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Pollination in the Anthropocene: a Moth Can Learn Ozone-Altered Floral Blends.Journal of chemical ecology · 2020Article
- The role of volatiles in plant communication.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2019Review
- Settling on leaves or flowers: herbivore feeding site determines the outcome of indirect interactions between herbivores and pollinators.Oecologia · 2019Article
- The olfactory coreceptor IR8a governs larval feces-mediated competition avoidance in a hawkmoth.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Mutagenesis of odorant coreceptorProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Fuelling on the wing: sensory ecology of hawkmoth foraging.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Review
- Floral plasticity: Herbivore-species-specific-induced changes in flower traits with contrasting effects on pollinator visitation.Plant, cell & environment · 2019Article
- Transcriptome Analysis of Gene Families Involved in Chemosensory Function in Spodoptera littoralis (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae).BMC genomics · 2019Article
- Foraging efficiency and size matching in a plant-pollinator community: the importance of sugar content and tongue length.Ecology letters · 2019Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cost efficient foraging is of especial importance for animals like hawkmoths or hummingbirds that are feeding 'on the wing', making their foraging energetically demanding. The economic decisions made by these animals have a strong influence on the plants they pollinate and floral volatiles are often guiding these decisions. Here we show that the hawkmoth Manduca sexta exhibits an innate preference for volatiles of those Nicotiana flowers, which match the length of the moth's proboscis. This preference becomes apparent already at the initial inflight encounter, with the odour plume. Free-flight respiration analyses combined with nectar calorimetry revealed a significant caloric gain per invested flight energy only for preferred-matching-flowers. Our data therefore support Darwin's initial hypothesis on the coevolution of flower length and moth proboscis. We demonstrate that this interaction is mediated by an adaptive and hardwired olfactory preference of the moth for flowers offering the highest net-energy reward.
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