Many flowering plants woo insect pollinators and gently direct them to their most fertile blossoms by changing the color of individual flowers from day to day. Through color cues, the plant signals to the insect that it would be better off visiting one flower on its bush than another. The particular hue tells the pollinator that the flower is full of far more pollen than are neighboring blooms. That nectar-rich flower also happens to be fertile and ready to disperse its pollen or to receive pollen the insect has picked up from another flower. Plants do not have to spend precious resources maintaining reservoirs of nectar in all their flowers. Thus, the color-coded communication system benefits both plants and insects.

   For example, on the lantana plant, a flower starts out on the first day as yellow, when it is rich with pollen and nectar. Influenced by an as-yet-unidentified environmental signal, the flower changes color by triggering the production of the pigment anthromyacin. It turns orange on the second day and red on the third. By the third day, it has no pollen to offer insects and is no longer fertile. On any given lantana bush, only 10 to 15 per cent of the blossoms are likely to be yellow and fertile. But in tests measuring the responsiveness of butterflies, it was discovered that the insects visited the yellow flowers at least 100 times more than would be expected from haphazard visitation. Experiments with paper flowers and painted flowers demonstrated that the butterflies were responding to color cues rather than, say, the scent of the nectar.

   In other types of plants, blossoms change from white to red, others from yellow to red, and so on. These color changes have been observed in some 74 families of plants.

The word “woo” is closest in meaning to __________

Câu hỏi liên quan

• The word “surreptitiously” is closest in meaning to ...........

• Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word “nocturnal”?

•  It is mentioned in the passage that before the electric lamp was invented, ..............

ZUNIA12

• What is the author’s main purpose in the first paragraph of to passage?

• By whom (what) was the Decade for Women organized?

• The word “doubtless” in the passage mostly means ...............

• The author uses the word “But” in paragraph 4 to ______.

• The word “hurdles” can be best replaced by ...............

• The “labellum” (line 7) is most comparable to .........

• What does the passage mainly discuss?

• Ten thousand years ago, ................

• The expression get out of hand is closest in meaning to .........

• In the paragraph 2, the word “accomplishments” can be best replaced by ..............

• The writer seems to imply that Europeans travel mostly for the reason that ...............

• The word “accelerated” in paragraph 5 is closest in meaning to ______.

• The word "They" in paragraph 2 refers to ______.

• The underlined word “refrains” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ......

• The word “it” in paragraph 2 refers to ______.

• What do pads help the players to protect?

• The passage supports which of the following conclusions?