It is no coincidence that flowers have evolved to display the same coloured petals in different continents, according to researchers in Australia and Sweden. Flowers in Australia and Europe have very similar petal colours, in spite of the Australian continent having separated from other continents 34 million years ago.
The common factor is the colour vision of bees, which is similar amongst bee species all over the world. Since bees’ trichromatic vision evolved before angiosperms, it appears that flowers have responded by developing petal colours that best take advantage of the pollination opportunities offered by bees.
The research strengthens a currently limited body of research on the relationships between plants and pollinators in Australia.
Ian Lowden
Musician
This article implies that evolution is a deliberate response to the environment.
Evolution is a passive process that does not involve deliberate or purposeful changes.
The plants that had flowers of the colors most favored by bees were more successful and out bred those flowers that were not so attractive to bees.
They did not "decide" to change the color of their flowers nor did they "respond" to the color preference of the bees.
Sad how something as simple as evolution is so widely misunderstood...even by scientific researchers at Monash University.
Jane Rawson
Editor, Energy & Environment at The Conversation
Hi Ian, you should blame we editors at The Conversation, not the researchers at Monash. It's our attempts to summarise research in such a small space that lead to these kind of non-specific terms.