
Zhe ChenKunming Institute of Botany Chinese Academy of Sciences
Zhe Chen
Doctor of Philosophy
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16
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (16)
Background: Color is a critical visual signal in plant-animal interactions, including pollination and seed dispersal. It is generally believed that plant colors evolve under selection pressure from animal interactors. Red, in particular, is associated with several well-known phenomena: Why are so many bird-pollinated flowers red? Why are red fruits...
Background and Aims
There are intrinsic conflicts between signalling to mutualists and concealing (camouflaging) from antagonists. Like animals, plants also use camouflage as a defence against herbivores. However, this can potentially reduce their attractiveness to pollinators.
Methods
Using Fritillaria delavayi, an alpine camouflaged plant with i...
Bird pollination is well-established in New World Bignoniaceae, but studies of species with floral traits suggestive of bird pollination in the Old World are lacking. Here we studied the pollination ecology of Mayodendron igneum to test the prediction of pollination by specialist flower-visiting birds. Observations from multiple sites showed that b...
Field investigations and specimen examination revealed no obvious morphological differences among Brandisia chevalieri Bonati, B. discolor J.D.Hooker & Thomson, and B. scandens Bonati. This observation, coupled with previously established phylogenetic evidence, confirms B. chevalieri and B. scandens as synonyms of B. discolor. The issue concerning...
Pollination and seed dispersal are crucial processes for plant reproduction, sharing ecological relevance and similarities, yet they have rarely been considered together. Flowers appear to express greater phenotypic diversity than fruits due to multiple confounding factors, which pose challenges for comparative analyses. The colours of flowers and...
Camouflage has been reported as a defensive strategy in plants, while our understanding of the evolution of such defensive coloration is still limited. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that camouflaged plants are shorter than non-camouflaged ones in the same habitat. Based on a species list from the subnival zone from the Hengduan Mou...
Flower constancy describes the phenomenon that pollinators tend to successively visit flowers of a single species during foraging, reducing reproductive interference in natural communities. The extent of flower constancy is largely determined by the floral traits of co-flowering species. Both higher inter-specific and lower intraspecific difference...
Brandisia is a shrubby genus of about eight species distributed basically in East Asian evergreen broadleaved forests (EBLFs), with distribution centers in the karst regions of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangxi in southwestern China. Based on the hemiparasitic and more or less liana habits of this genus, we hypothesized that its evolution and distributi...
Background: Floral colour is a primary signal in plant-pollinator interactions. Presumably because bees lack red receptors, bee-pollinated flowers are rarely red. Hypericum (Hypericaceae) is a genus, with yellow flowers and filaments, mainly pollinated by bees. However, one species, H. ascyron exhibits unique red filaments. Aims: We tested whether...
Pollination niche shifts can drive remarkable floral divergence between closely related plant species. The Leucolirion clade of Lilium contains species with either tepal-recurved or trumpet-shaped flowers. The tepal-recurved flowers are bright orange and might be pollinated by butterflies and/or birds. The trumpet-shaped flowers are mostly pale and...
Pollination niche shifts can drive remarkable floral divergence between closely related plant species. The Leucolirion clade of Lilium contains species with either tepal-recurved or trumpet-shaped flowers. The tepal-recurved flowers are bright orange and might be pollinated by butterflies and/or birds. The trumpet-shaped flowers are mostly pale and...
Aims
Bee-pollinated flowers are rarely red, presumably because bees (which lack red receptors) have difficulty detecting red targets. Although the response of bees to red colour has been investigated in lab experiments, most stimuli have been pure red, while the subtle diversity of red as perceived by humans (human-red) has received very limited at...
Background and aims:
Floral colour is a primary signal in plant-pollinator interactions. The association between red flowers and bird pollination is well known, explained by the "bee avoidance" and "bird attraction" hypotheses. Nevertheless, the relative importance of these two hypotheses has rarely been investigated on a large scale, even in term...
Spinescence has been thought to have evolved mainly as a defense against herbivores. Thus, studying its evolution in a whole flora is an excellent approach for understanding long-term plant-herbivore interactions. In this study, we characterized the spinescent plant species of Jiaozi Snow Mountain, Southwestern China, in order to explore the effect...
The efficacy of camouflage through background matching is highly environment-dependent, often resulting in intraspecific colour divergence in animals to optimize crypsis in different visual environments. This phenomenon is largely unexplored in plants, although several lines of evidence suggest they do use crypsis to avoid damage by herbivores. Usi...
Seed dormancy and germination characteristics are important factors determining plant reproductive success, and they may be expected to have major influences on plant distribution. In this study, we aimed to explore the seed dormancy and germination characteristics of two Rheum species (Rh. nobile and Rh. alexandrae) endemic to the Himalaya-Hengdua...