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What flower colours do birds and bees prefer?ShareShare articleWhat flower colours do birds and bees prefer?

• By James Bullen

• ABC Science

• Topic:Science and Technology

Wed 16 Nov 2016Wednesday 16 November 2016Wed 16 Nov 2016 at 7:28am

abc.net.au/news/birds-and-bees-prefer-have-flower-colours-preferences/7959382Link copiedShareShare article

Flowers fill our world with beautiful colour. But it wasn't always that way.

Fossils suggest flowers were originally simple structures, without much pigment.

Scientists believe flowers had a dull, pale yellow or green appearance before they started to evolve more than 100 million years ago into the vibrantly coloured flowers we know today.

They evolved that way to attract efficient pollinators — bees, which feed exclusively on nectar and pollen, and birds, some of which, like honeyeaters, feed on nectar.

Bees and birds see a very different world to us, and many plants have evolved colours that match their specific visual systems, said Associate Professor Adrian Dyer of RMIT University.

He said research indicates there is a strong link between the colours commonly seen in today's flowers — especially blue and white — and the colours bees can best detect and discriminate against others.

This relationship has been strongly demonstrated in the northern hemisphere, but Dr Dyer and his colleagues have also established a similar connection between flowers and native bees in Australia.

"We showed that flowers in Australia have evolved to suit the colour vision of Australian native bees,"

he said.

"And because of the geological separation of Australia to the rest of the world this has been parallel evolution, it's happened independently.

"We also tested that in Nepal, and went up to about 4,500 metres, and again we see flowers have very often evolved distinct signals to suit the visual systems of bees," he added.

What do bees see?

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Our eyes can detect three different colours — red, blue and green.

Bees cannot see red, but they can see blue and green, as well as ultraviolet light. This means colours look very different to what we see, and they can see things we cannot see.

For example, many flowers have "ultraviolet nectar guides" on them that are invisible to humans but tell bees where to find nectar in a flower.

"The patterns are like signposts telling bees where to go to find the nectar," Dr Dyer said.

"So they're analogous to arrows, they point to where the essential parts of the flower are.

"The flower has evolved these so that pollinators easily find the nectar."

Another difference is that bees have less visual acuity than us.

Visual acuity, or clarity of sight, is what the optometrist is testing when they get you to read the letters on the board — how well you can resolve detail at a distance.

Compared to humans, bees have awful acuity. Unlike the large lenses in human eyes, bees have multi-faceted compound eyes that focus well up close, but not from further away.

"They only really see flowers when they get reasonably close, maybe less than 50 or 60 centimetres," Dr Dyer said.

This means bees use scent, rather than sight, to find flowers from a distance.

What about birds?

In many parts of Australia, native plants have evolved to have red flowers, specifically to attract birds.

Some birds see violet, blue, green, and red — which is described as "violet-sensitive". Other birds are "ultraviolet-sensitive" because they see more of the spectrum — including ultraviolet.

Most Australian pollinating birds — those that visit flowers for nectar — from the honeyeater family such as the eastern spinebill and the yellow wattlebird, as well as silvereyes and rainbow lorikeets, which belong to different families, have "violet-sensitive" vision, said adjunct researcher Mani Shrestha of RMIT University, also a researcher at Monash University.

Scientists think the reason some plants have evolved to have a red hue that attracts birds, and not bees, might be to do with the concept of "resource partitioning."

In pollinating flowers, resource partitioning occurs where the plant appeals to one group of pollinators to exclude another group.

We typically think of bees as being beneficial to flowers, but they are really just interested in nectar, and not altruistically spreading pollen, said Dr Dyer.

"Bees coming to the flower, might damage the plant and scare away other legitimate pollinators. So it might be an advantage to head towards specialisation," he said.

What if there are no birds or bees?

Macquarie Island, which lies halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica in the Pacific Ocean has no bees or pollinating birds.

Instead, the major pollinator of flowers there is a fly.

Flies have different colour systems from birds and bees again — which means the flowers have evolved in entirely different colours. Instead of the vibrant blues, pinks and reds you can sometimes see in Australian gardens, the flowers are a creamy white-green.

"Flies appear to have a categorical visual system where they see four different types of colour. It looks like they have innate preferences for certain types of yellow," Dr Dyer said.

"This yellow-green-cream colour is what they prefer. They don't have the same preferences as bees, and so the flowers have evolved a completely different way."

Bringing the birds and bees to your yard

So which flowers should you plant in your garden if you want to lure in birds and bees?

Most bees in the garden are honeybees, which are an introduced species in Australia. The honeybee is a big generalist — it will feed off any flower, as long as no pesticides are being used, Dr Dyer said.

But given an option, both honeybees and Australian native bees, such as the stingless sugarbag bee (Tetragonula carbonaria), have an innate preference for blue flowers and white flowers.

And, according to Professor Dyer, native bees like native plants.

"Native bees, like Tetrogonula carbonaria [the sugarbag bee] and the blue-banded bee, we're still learning what flowers they like best. But I do see blue-banded bees going to a whole variety of different flowers, especially natives — they love the Australian natives."

If you want to attract birds to your garden, you would do well to plant flowers with a red hue — like the waratah or grevillea.

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