ArticleBiology letters2018
Frugivores and the evolution of fruit colour.
Article in Biology letters, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Frugivory and seed dispersal in a hyperdiverse plant clade and its role as a keystone resource for the Neotropical fauna.Annals of botany · 2021Pooled it
- Bark and ambrosia beetle fungi emit a greater diversity of volatile organic compounds than other fungi.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- Review
- Integrated Metabolomic and Transcriptomic Analyses of Anthocyanin Synthesis During Fruit Development inBiology · 2025Article
- Applying Data Science Practices to Identify Characteristics of Postsecondary Autism Support Programs From Their Websites.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2025Article
- Metabolome and Transcriptome Analyses of the Molecular Mechanism Underlying Light-Induced Anthocyanin Accumulation in Pepper (Current issues in molecular biology · 2025Article
- Molecular mechanisms driving the unusual pigmentation shift during eggplant fruit development.Plant communications · 2025Article
- Why do understoreyEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Effects of temperature gradient on functional fruit traits: an elevation-for-temperature approach.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Impact of early visual experience on later usage of color cues.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Weak latitudinal trends in reproductive traits of Afromontane forest trees.Annals of botany · 2024Article
- Seed dispersal syndrome predicts ethanol concentration of fruits in a tropical dry forest.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Linguistic concepts are self-generating choice architectures.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Bird preferences for fruit size, but not color, vary in accordance with fruit traits along a tropical elevational gradient.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Bearing Fruit: Miocene Apes and Rosaceous Fruit Evolution.Biological theory · 2023Article
- The illusiveness of seed dispersal syndromes. A commentary on: Fleshy fruit traits and seed dispersers: which traits define syndromes?Annals of botany · 2022Article
- What we talk about when we talk about colors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Fruit odorants mediate co-specialization in a multispecies plant-animal mutualism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Frugivore-fruit size relationships between palms and mammals reveal past and future defaunation impacts.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Palm fruit colours are linked to the broad-scale distribution and diversification of primate colour vision systems.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The ecological function of fruit colour has been the focus of many studies. The most commonly tested hypothesis is that fruit colour has evolved to facilitate detection by seed-dispersing animals. We tested whether distributions of fruit colours are consistent with the hypothesis that colour is an evolved signal to seed dispersers using a comparative community approach. We compared the contrast between ripe fruits and leaf backgrounds at two sites, one in Madagascar where seed dispersers are primarily night-active, red-green colour-blind lemurs, and the other in Uganda, where most vertebrate seed dispersers are day-active primates and birds with greater capacity for colour vision. We show that fruits in Uganda have higher contrast against leaf background in the red-green and luminance channels whereas fruits in Madagascar contrast more in the yellow-blue channel. These results indicate that fruit colour has evolved to contrast against background leaves in response to the visual capabilities of local seed disperser communities.
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