Fruits of the rain forest and taste perception as a result of evolutionary interactions.
Résumé
The evolutionary interactions presented explain why, in the "sweet biochemical environment" of the forest, where the sugar concentration in fruit pulps is 10 to 50 times the Pygmy taste threshold, there is no reason for a high taste sensitivity to evolve. Conversely, for other populations living outside the rain forest, where biodiversity and thus competition between fruiting species is not as high (and sweet fruits rather scarce), a slightly higher taste sensi tivity would be adaptive to foods lower in sugar. Hence the differences between populations presently observed. But the time-scale necessary for the emergence of such differences is obviously very short (a few thousand years) when compared to the millions of years that allowed the emergence of new plant species.
Origine : Accord explicite pour ce dépôt
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