This volume highlights the new synthesis of pollination biology and plant mating systems which is rejuvenating the two-hundred-year-old discipline of floral biology. It provides a current examination of the evolution and functional significance of floral traits in animal-pollinated plants, combining ecological and genetic studies with natural history approaches and theoretical modeling. Divided into three sections, the book begins with the first English translation of Christian Konrad. Sprengel's introduction to his classic work and a historical analysis of his observations. The second section addresses current conceptual problems in floral biology, concentrating on floral diversification, floral longevity, pollen dispersal and mating patterns, the ecology of geitonogamous pollination, and flower size dimorphism in plants with unisexual flowers. The final chapters of the book examine model systems and include the evolution of floral morphology and function, deceit pollination, reproductive success and gender variation, stylar polymorphisms, and the evolution of flowers in relation to insect pollinators on islands. With its a detailed treatment of the selective forces shaping floral diversification in animal-pollinated plants, Floral Biology provides ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and botanists with a wealth of current information. Everyone interested in the evolution of flowering plants will benefit from this timely, authoritative resource on the interactions between insects and plants.

Studies in floral biology are largely concerned with how flowers function to promote pollination and mating. The role of pollination in governing mating patterns in plant populations inextricably links the evolution of pollination and mating systems. Despite the close functional link between pollination and mating, research conducted for most of this century on these two fundamental aspects of plant reproduction has taken quite separate courses. This has resulted in suprisingly little cross-fertilization between the fields of pollination biology on the one hand and plant mating-system studies on the other. The separation of the two areas has largely resulted from the different backgrounds and approaches adopted by workers in these fields. Most pollination studies have been ecological in nature with a strong emphasis on field research and until recently few workers considered how the mechanics of pollen dispersal might influence mating patterns and individual plant fitness. In contrast, work on plant mating patterns has often been conducted in an ecological vacuum largely devoid of information on the environmental and demographic context in which mating occurs. Mating-system research has been dominated by population genetic and theoretical perspectives with surprisingly little consideration given to the proximate ecological factors responsible for causing a particular pattern of mating to occur.