AJB Special Issue Call for Papers:
Paradigm Shifts in Flower Color

Proposal Deadline: September 16, 2024

The American Journal of Botany (AJB), the primary research journal of the Botanical Society of America (BSA), is pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue titled, “Paradigm Shifts in Flower Color.”

The dogma of plant reproductive biology is that flower color functions primarily to attract pollinators, leading to successful fertilization. Flower color is mainly caused by the accumulation of different pigments in the floral tissues. Flower color may also serve other important functions in flowers, and therefore it may provide an alternative or complementary role to that of pollinator attraction. The main group of secondary pigments in plants, the flavonoids, function as antioxidants and provide protection against extreme temperatures, drought, UV radiation, pathogens, herbivores, and other selective agents. All these functions have been extensively demonstrated in photosynthetic tissues, but it has been recently shown that flavonoids have similar functions in many flowers. This fact may explain the current distribution of flower colors across environmental gradients and may have important consequences when interpreting plant adaptations to pollinators and their environment, especially with regard to climate change. However, carotenoids and betalains, the other main groups of flower pigments, also have antioxidant activity, but their protective roles in flowers are mostly unknown. We expect this special issue of the American Journal of Botany will be interesting to a uniquely diverse range of readers including plant ecologists, plant evolutionary biologists, plant biochemists, plant geneticists, and pollination biologists alike.

We welcome studies using a broad range of approaches, including field studies, greenhouse experiments, and laboratory investigations. Reports including results from selective pressures to reflectance spectra to molecular genetics and beyond are welcome. We encourage authors from all parts of the world and at all career stages to submit proposals for studies examining the ecology and evolution of flower color from a diversity of perspectives.

How to submit a proposal: Authors interested in contributing to the “Paradigm Shifts in Flower Color” special issue of AJB should email a proposal as a PDF to ajb@botany.org that includes a tentative title; tentative author list; and a 250-300-word abstract. Include “Paradigm Shifts in Flower Color” in the email subject line. Please contact Amy McPherson, BSA Director of Publications, at ajb@botany.org with any questions or to discuss potential contributions.

The deadline for proposal submission is September 16, 2024. Proposals will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and Special Issue Guest Editors; authors will be notified by October 7, 2024, as to whether their proposal was accepted.

Authors whose proposals are accepted should submit their manuscripts by February 3, 2025. Note that acceptance of a proposal does not guarantee the eventual acceptance of the manuscript, as all manuscripts will be rigorously peer-reviewed and held to the standards of the journal. The target date for publication of the special issue is summer/fall 2025.

See the Author Guidelines for details on journal scope, article types, and manuscript preparation.

AJB is a hybrid journal, with an option for Open Access. Authors invited to contribute to the special issue will receive a 20% discount for Open Access or the OA Article Processing Charges (APCs) may be covered by the authors’ institutions if they have a “read and publish” deal with Wiley. For more on Open Access, see https://bsapubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/15372197/homepage/fundedaccess.

For papers submitted to the special issue: corresponding authors who are not currently Botanical Society of America members will be offered a complimentary 1-year membership; corresponding authors who are members will receive a complimentary 1-year extension to their membership.

Special Issue Editors
Justen Whittall, Santa Clara University • Eduardo Narbona, Universidad Pablo de Olavide • José Carlos del Valle García, Universidad de Sevilla • Andrea Berardi, James Madison University