Making yourself heard: why well‐exposed flowers are an adaptation for bat pollination.

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]