@article {Ho079947, author = {Winnie W. Ho and Nathan Kutz and Julienne Ng and Jeff A. Riffell}, title = {Sexual selection drives floral scent diversification in carnivorous pitcher plants (Sarraceniaceae)}, elocation-id = {079947}, year = {2016}, doi = {10.1101/079947}, publisher = {Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory}, abstract = {Plant volatiles mediate vital ecological services, including pollination and herbivory. Empirical studies show that both pollinators and herbivores exert strong selective pressures on plant phenotypes, leading to the expectation that volatiles from floral and vegetative tissues should exhibit the respective signatures of sexual and natural selection. We tested this hypothesis in the North American pitcher plants, which have modified leaves to capture prey and provide an ideal opportunity to understand the evolution of scent compounds across different plant organs. We collected a comprehensive dataset of floral and vegetative volatiles from across the NA Sarraceniaceae, and used multivariate analysis methods to investigate scent evolution in this unique taxon. Our major findings revealed that (i) flowers and traps produced highly distinct scent profiles, consistent with the hypothesis that volatiles alleviate trade-offs due to incidental pollinator-consumption; (ii) across species, floral scent separated into distinct regions of scent space, while traps were showed little evidence of clustering {\textendash} this may be due to convergence on a generalist strategy for insect capture; and (iii) floral scent evolved much more rapidly than trap scent, showing that even in carnivorous taxa, our framework for phenotypic evolution should incorporate pollinator-mediated sexual selection, and herbivore-mediated natural selection.}, URL = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/12/079947}, eprint = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/10/12/079947.full.pdf}, journal = {bioRxiv} }