ArticleEcology and evolution2019
Signal and reward in wild fleshy fruits: Does fruit scent predict nutrient content?
Article in Ecology and evolution, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrated analysis of metabolites and enzyme activities reveals the plasticity of central carbon metabolism in grape (Horticulture research · 2025Article
- Seed dispersal by deception: A game between mimetic seeds and their bird dispersers.Plant diversity · 2025Review
- Picking pithy plants: Pith selectivity by wild white-faced capuchin monkeys, Cebus imitator.American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Scent-mediated bee pollination and myrmecochory in an enigmatic geophyte with pyrogenic flowering and subterranean development of fleshy fruits.American journal of botany · 2024Article
- Effects of temperature gradient on functional fruit traits: an elevation-for-temperature approach.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Multiscale variability in nutrients and secondary metabolites in a bat-dispersed neotropical fruit.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Seed dispersal syndrome predicts ethanol concentration of fruits in a tropical dry forest.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Fruit scent as an honest signal for fruit quality.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- The illusiveness of seed dispersal syndromes. A commentary on: Fleshy fruit traits and seed dispersers: which traits define syndromes?Annals of botany · 2022Article
- Rodent responses to volatile compounds provide insights into the function of floral scent in mammal-pollinated plants.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Fruit Fly Larval Survival in Picked and Unpicked Tomato Fruit of Differing Ripeness and Associated Gene Expression Patterns.Insects · 2022Article
- Assessing urinary odours across the oestrous cycle in a mouse model using portable and benchtop gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- The evolution of fruit scent: phylogenetic and developmental constraints.BMC evolutionary biology · 2020Article
- Sweet tooth: Elephants detect fruit sugar levels based on scent alone.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Signal and reward in wild fleshy fruits: Does fruit scent predict nutrient content?Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 6 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Plant species with fleshy fruits offer animals rewards such as sugar, protein, and fat, to feed on their fruits and disperse their seeds. They have also evolved visual and olfactory signals indicating their presence and ripeness.In some systems, fruit color serves as a reliable visual signal of nutrient content. Yet even though many volatile chemicals used as olfactory signals derive from nutrients animals seek, it is still unknown whether fruit scent encodes information regarding nutrient content in wild fruits.We examine the relationship between olfactory signals and nutrient rewards in 28 fruiting plant species in Madagascar. We measured the relative amounts of four chemical classes in fruit scent using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, as well as the relative amounts of sugar and protein in fruit pulp.We found that protein levels are not associated with elevated amounts of chemically related volatile compounds in fruit scent. In contrast, sugar content is strongly associated with the chemical composition of fruit scent.To our knowledge, this is the first research to explore the connection between fruit chemical signals and nutrient rewards. Our results imply that in the case of sugar, fruit scent is predictive of nutrient content and hence an honest signal.
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