Pollinator behavior and plant speciation: looking beyond the “ethological isolation” paradigm

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Abstract
Floral isolating mechanisms consist of barriers to interspecific pollination in angiosperms imposed by structural contrivances … [and] by the constancy of the pollinators to one kind of flower… Grant (1949), p 93 Ist die Pollen-übertragung durch Insekten geeignet, die zur Artbildung nötige (mechanische) Isolierung zu fördern? (Is pollen transfer by insects suitable for promoting the mechanical isolation needed for speciation?) Werth (1955), p163 Another very obvious deficiency of observations indispensable to be made on the subject … resulted … [from] …the fertilisation of flowers by insects being studied by botanists but little acquainted with insects. Müller (1873), p 187 It often is claimed that Darwin had little to say about the evolution of species, in spite of the title of his 1859 book. This is not strictly true: a close reading of the Origin of Species reveals that Darwin envisioned speciation for the most part as the eventual extension of a process of divergence beginning at a much smaller scale within a single species, and driven for the most part by natural selection. What is true, however, is that a detailed understanding of speciation in its many forms remains an elusive and desirable prize: speciation is, so to speak, the holy grail of evolutionary biology. Many questions confront us still.

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