Pollination systems involving floral mimicry of fruit: aspects of their ecology and evolution

Floral mimicry of nonfloral resources is found across many angiosperm families, with mimicry of varied models including carrion, dung, fungi, insects and fruit. These systems provide excellent models to investigate the role of visual and olfactory cues for the ecology and evolution of plant-animal interactions. Interestingly, floral mimicry of fruit is least documented in the literature, although ripe or rotting fruits play an important role as a food or brood site in many insect groups such as Diptera, Hymenoptera and Coleoptera, and frugivorous vertebrates such as bats and birds. In ecosystems where fruit represents a frequent, reliable resource (e.g. tropical forests), this form of floral mimicry could represent a common mimicry class with specialization possible along multiple axes such as fruit of different species, stages of ripeness and microbial colonization. In this review, we summarize current research on floral mimicry of fruit. We place this review in the context of floral mimicry of a broader spectrum of nonfloral resources, and we discuss conceptual frameworks of mimicry vs generalized food deception or pre-existing sensory bias. Finally, we briefly review the specificity and complexity of fruit-insect ecological interactions, and we summarize important considerations and questions for moving forward in this field.