Koichi Sugimoto, Tomoyuki Yokoi

It is very difficult to provide strong evidence of how flower characteristic that may serve to attract pollinators, improve plant fitness. We propose to use the natural variation that we have observed within our wild tomato (Solanum pimpinellifolium) plant stocks to investigate the effect of anther color on attracting flower-visiting arthropods which act as pollinators. By looking at within-species variation, we can vary anther color while keeping other factors like petal color and other genetically controlled variables constant. We believe that our proposed study makes a significant contribution to the literature because it will allow us to clearly determine the contribution of anther color in attracting pollinators.