FReD: The Floral Reflectance Database — A Web Portal for Analyses of Flower Colour
Open Access
- 10 December 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Public Library of Science (PLoS) in PLOS ONE
- Vol. 5 (12), e14287
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0014287
Abstract
Flower colour is of great importance in various fields relating to floral biology and pollinator behaviour. However, subjective human judgements of flower colour may be inaccurate and are irrelevant to the ecology and vision of the flower's pollinators. For precise, detailed information about the colours of flowers, a full reflectance spectrum for the flower of interest should be used rather than relying on such human assessments. The Floral Reflectance Database (FReD) has been developed to make an extensive collection of such data available to researchers. It is freely available at http://www.reflectance.co.uk. The database allows users to download spectral reflectance data for flower species collected from all over the world. These could, for example, be used in modelling interactions between pollinator vision and plant signals, or analyses of flower colours in various habitats. The database contains functions for calculating flower colour loci according to widely-used models of bee colour space, reflectance graphs of the spectra and an option to search for flowers with similar colours in bee colour space. The Floral Reflectance Database is a valuable new tool for researchers interested in the colours of flowers and their association with pollinator colour vision, containing raw spectral reflectance data for a large number of flower species.This publication has 33 references indexed in Scilit:
- Evolutionary Paths Underlying Flower Color Variation inAntirrhinumScience, 2006
- Flower colour phenology in British mesotrophic grassland communitiesGrass and Forage Science, 2005
- THEEVOLUTION OFCOLORVISION ININSECTSAnnual Review of Entomology, 2001
- Floral colour diversity in plant communities, bee colour space and a null modelProceedings. Biological sciences, 1999
- The Natural History of Pollination.Ecology, 1997
- Optimal Sets of Color Receptors and Color Opponent Systems for Coding of Natural Objects in Insect VisionJournal of Theoretical Biology, 1996
- Reflection of Near-Ultraviolet Radiation From Flowers of Australian Native PlantsAustralian Journal of Botany, 1996
- THE ECOLOGY OF FLOWER COLOURS AND THE NATURAL COLOUR VISION OF INSECT POLLINATORS: THE ISRAELI FLORA AS A STUDY CASEBiological Reviews, 1993
- Insects as Flower Visitors and PollinatorsAnnual Review of Entomology, 1983
- Color Science: Concepts and Methods, Quantitative Data and FormulasThe American Journal of Psychology, 1968