How Snapdragons keep their colour: Signposting trick reveals evolutionary mechanism

How Snapdragons keep their colour: Signposting trick reveals evolutionary mechanism

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsFile -- A study of the colour patterns among wild flowers in a mountain valley has yielded a clue about how nature controls fundamental evolutionary change in all species.

The team from the John Innes Centre who study snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus) uncovered a new evolutionary “trick” that favours colour schemes which signposts a flower’s entry point most clearly to pollinating bees.

A paper published reveals that the recently-evolved genetic mechanism, known as a hairpin, has been identified in nature for the first time. Professor Enrico Coen from the John Innes Centre says, it took the team “completely by surprise”.

“We have been studying these antirrhinum populations for 17 years and we were amazed by this,” he …

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(2017-12-04), How Snapdragons keep their colour: Signposting trick reveals evolutionary mechanism, NewsFile, 146, ISSN: 0000-0000, BUTTER® ID: 014802799