Angiosperm flowers reached their highest morphological diversity early in their evolutionary history

Autor(en)

Andrea López-Martínez, Susana Magallón, Anna Maria Louise von Balthazar-Schönenberger, Jürg Schönenberger, Hervé Sauquet, Marion Chartier

Abstrakt

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(en)

Department für Botanik und Biodiversitätsforschung

Externe Organisation(en)

Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, University of New South Wales, National Herbarium of New South Wales

Seiten

123

Publikationsdatum

2023

ÖFOS 2012

106042 Systematische Botanik, 106008 Botanik, 106012 Evolutionsforschung

Link zum Portal

https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/angiosperm-flowers-reached-their-highest-morphological-diversity-early-in-their-evolutionary-history(31dbb153-e794-46f9-a694-32b12e702d48).html