Plant–insect Interactions: a palaeontological and an evolutionary perspective

BGPI : équipe 6Flowers are a remarkable component of everyday life. Their diversity of shape, colour and fragrance witnesses the importance of the joint evolutionary processes resulting from the interactions between plants and their insect pollinators. Indeed, pollination mutualisms with insects are key factors that have allowed the evolutionary success and diversification of flowering plants (McKey & Hossaert-McKey, 2008). This diversification of plants has led to an even more impressive diversification of insects. This chapter retraces the main steps of the past history of diversification of pollination interactions with the emergence of some major pollinator groups of insects and proposes some insights into the selective processes acting on the evolution of the entomophilous pollination