Flower visitors have a taste for salt, but this may have little relevance to nectar evolution: a comment on Finkelstein et al. 2022

Graham H. Pyke, Zong-Xin Ren*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalComment/opinionpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)
50 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

A recent study by Finkelstein et al (2022) has demonstrated that a variety of flower-visiting animals have a taste for salt, such that plants with sodium enriched nectar received more visits and were visited by more animal species compared with control plants. They further suggest that plants could thus attract pollinators through relatively high levels of sodium in their nectar and that this could drive
evolution of nectar sodium concentration.
However, as argued below, we reject this latter suggestion, especially because their experimental manipulations departed significantly from natural circumstances and were irrelevant to nectar evolution.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)70-72
Number of pages3
JournalJournal of Pollination Ecology
Volume31
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

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