In my research I study how flowers get their colours and how those colours evolved in the eyes of the animals that see them. Flowering plants are pollinated by a diverse group of animals that see the world in different ways. In order for plants to reproduce, their flowers need to be attractive to pollinators, but at the same time be unattractive to other animals, maintain an optimal temperature and maximise reproductive output. Altogether, this leads to a suite of (often conflicting) selective forces on plants and pollinators. I use biophysics to study the optical and thermal properties of flowers and contextualise it within an evolutionary framework of animal vision and reproductive biology.
