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This article explores the adaptation of flowers for bat pollination. It discusses the traits associated with bat-pollinated flowers, such as wide corollas, dull coloration, musty odors, and copious pollen. The study experimentally tests the hypothesis that increased exposure decreases foraging times for nectar bats. The results show that long stems and complex backgrounds lead to decreased foraging times, suggesting that well-exposed flowers are easier for bats to detect and locate. The article also discusses the potential role of echolocation and other sensory modalities in bat foraging behavior. The study provides raw data, images, a video, and an R script for statistical analyses. [Extracted from the article]

Premise: Many tropical plants are bat‐pollinated, but these mammals often carry copious, multispecific pollen loads making bat‐pollinated plants susceptible to heterospecific pollen deposition and reproductive interference. We investigated pollen transfer between sympatric bat‐pollinated Burmeistera species and their response to heterospecific pollen deposition from each other. Methods: We quantified conspecific and heterospecific pollen deposition for two populations of B. ceratocarpa, a recipient species in heterospecific pollen transfer interactions, that co‐occur with different donor relatives (B. borjensis and B. glabrata). We then used a cross‐pollination scheme using pollen mixtures to assess the species' responses to heterospecific pollen deposition in terms of fruit abortion and seed production. Results: Burmeistera ceratocarpa received significantly more heterospecific pollen from its relatives at both sites than its own pollen was deposited on its relatives. However, heterospecific pollen deposition only affected seed production by B. borjensis and B. glabrata, but not by B. ceratocarpa, suggesting that early acting post‐pollination barriers buffer the latter against reproductive interference. Crosses between sympatric and allopatric populations suggest that the study species are fully isolated in sympatry, while isolation between allopatric populations is strong but incomplete. Conclusions: We did not observe evidence of reproductive interference among our study species, because either heterospecific pollen deposition did not affect their seed production (B. ceratocarpa) or they receive heterospecific pollen only rarely (B. borjensis and B. glabrata). Frequent heterospecific pollen deposition might favor the evolution of barriers against foreign pollen (as in B. ceratocarpa) that alleviate the competitive costs of sharing low fidelity pollinators with co‐occurring species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]