
Of course, this is the problem faced by many plants. Some of the most successful, flowering plants, use animals to overcome this. But the addition of pollinators into the reproductive mix doesn’t change that there are differences in the interests of male and female plants. As in many animals. males are thought to be capable of producing more gametes, so gain greater reproductive success by dispersing as much pollen as possible.

The predictions are first, that male flowers should put more “effort” into attracting pollinators than females, and that this should actually work. That is, the moths should be more attracted to male than female flowers.
Because this is a nocturnal moth, you’d expect that things like flower shape and colour would not matter as much as odour, so that’s what the authors collected: floral fumes! Technically tricky, but once accomplished, they found that the male flowers released more odorants than females. The authors note that the amount of odorants are variable, however; indeed, other studies had looked for this difference, and didn’t find it.
To test the responses of moths to flowers, they reared moths in the laboratory, so the moths had no previous experience with flowers. The male moths were significantly more likely to approach male flowers; the female moths showed no preference.

Whether or not this is the case, it wouldn’t actually explain why unmated females show no preference to male or female flowers. If female moths can change from “no preference” to “preference for female flowers,” there seems to be no strong reason why a change “preference for males flowers” to “preference for female flowers” is somehow less probable.
References
Waelti, M., Page, P., Widmer, A., & Schiestl, F. (2009). How to be an attractive male: floral dimorphism and attractiveness to pollinators in a dioecious plant BMC Evolutionary Biology, 9 (1) DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-9-190
Flower picture used under a Creative Commons license.
Moth picture by user troubleatmill used under a Creative Commons license.
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