Angiosperm flowers reached their highest morphological diversity early in their evolutionary history
- Author(s)
- Andrea López-Martínez, Susana Magallón, Anna Maria Louise von Balthazar-Schönenberger, Jürg Schönenberger, Hervé Sauquet, Marion Chartier
- Abstract
Flowers are the complex and highly diverse reproductive structures of
angiosperms. Because of their role in sexual reproduction, the evolution of
flowers is tightly linked to angiosperm speciation and diversification.
Accordingly, the quantification of floral morphological diversity (disparity)
among angiosperm subgroups and through time may give important insights
into the evolutionary history of angiosperms as a whole. Based on a
comprehensive dataset focusing on 30 characters describing floral structure
across angiosperms, we used 1201 extant and 121 fossil flowers, as well as 15
reconstructed ancestral nodes to measure floral disparity and explore patterns
of floral evolution through time and across lineages. We found that
angiosperms reached their highest floral disparity in the Early Cretaceous.
However, decreasing disparity towards the present did not preclude the
innovation of other complex traits at other morphological levels, which likely
played a key role in the outstanding angiosperm species richness. Angiosperms
occupy specific regions of the theoretical morphospace, indicating that only a
portion of the possible floral trait combinations is observed in nature. The ANA
grade, the magnoliids, and the early-eudicot grade occupy large areas of the
morphospace (higher disparity), whereas nested groups occupy narrower
regions (lower disparity).- Organisation(s)
- Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research
- External organisation(s)
- Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, University of New South Wales, National Herbarium of New South Wales
- Pages
- 123
- Publication date
- 2023
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 106042 Systematic botany, 106008 Botany, 106012 Evolutionary research
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/31dbb153-e794-46f9-a694-32b12e702d48