TMI

Until Lizzie told me to mentally force myself to write down hypotheses for these papers I've been reading, I have to say that I definitely had too many conflicting ideas floating around in my head, literally. Floating as in, "I think this is what the authors are saying but I'm not really sure because I'm already thinking about the other two articles I just read" kind of floating.


So needless to say, actually sitting down and writing 6 different hypotheses on floral reflectance in relation to phenology and pollinators was a daunting task (I had fortified myself with two delicious Klondike ice cream bars before I started). But I believe I have come up with some hypotheses, please excuse me if they are not as original or understandable as they could possibly be:

1) Floral reflectance variability differs depending on the time of year which the plant blooms.

2) Exotic, invasive plants have higher ranges of color spectrum variability to attract native pollinators (discriminated through human vision).

Another note, I wrote out these hypotheses before I read some more papers, one of which included Flower color phenology in European grassland and woodland habitats, through the eyes of pollinators, written by Sarah E.J. Arnold, Steven C. Le Comber, and Lars Chitka. Fortunately (and somewhat unfortunately), their results showed that there was no trend in woodland flowers blooming in particular months to share the same color more often than expected by chance, "as one might predict if particular colors dominated at certain times of the year..." Their results (technically) nullified my first hypothesis since I do not know if this is true among other biomes, but it was a good discovery. The article in itself was a good find as well, since the authors included phenology tables for five habitats, and organized plants by family, genus, and species in regards to their flower colors (humans and bees). I'll be inputing this data into the known modes tab of the plant traits document I've been updating, but I think I'll save that for some time later during the day. So long for now!