Excerpt from the linked summary^1 by Kendra Leon, about a Current Biology paper:^2

>A daisy living in Namaqualand, a desert environment in northern South Africa where it rains only during the winter, has a few weeks to bloom, pollinate, and set seeds before the area becomes too dry for it to live.

>All the while, it must compete with other flowers to attract pollinator flies.

>According to a study by Beverley Glover, a professor at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and the director of the University’s Botanic Garden, and her team, the daisy known as *Gorteria * combines at least three preexisting genes to "create" lifelike female flies.

>“The thing that’s clever here is that these flowers have 12 to 14 petals, and you only get the spots on two to four of them that look totally random in position. That’s what the fly is doing. They’re looking at it and going, ‘Oh, that’s random. That’s not part of the plant. It must be a lady fly,’” Glover said in a phone interview.

>The male fly then lands on top of the "lady fly" and wiggles around in a vain attempt to mate. Eventually he gives up and flies away, but all the wiggling gave the daisy what it needs to survive — pollen.

> 

>Glover and her team found the gene that moves iron in the daisy changes some of its normally reddish-purple petals to a “more fly-like blue-green.”

>Meanwhile, the gene that grows hairs on the daisy's root causes the the petal hairs to expand, giving its fake female flies texture.

>To further add realism to its fake female flies and draw in unwitting and mating-focused male flies, Glover said the daisy has its fake flies appear seemingly at random — thereby avoiding looking like a patterned, spotted flower.

>She also noted the daisy creates the flies in a spiral pattern which she compared to a clock, with a fake fly petal appearing at 12 o’clock, then another at 4 o’clock and so on to give it the “appearance of being random but it’s not random at all.”

^1 Kendra Leon for Courthouse News, 23 Mar. 2023, https://www.courthousenews.com/daisy-found-to-create-fake-female-flies-to-lure-pollen-bearing-males/

^2 Roman Kellenberger et al. Multiple gene co-options underlie the rapid evolution of sexually deceptive flowers in Gorteria diffusa. Current biology (23 Mar. 2023) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.003

How did the daisy know how lady flies looked like ?

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