Degree of style coiling is associated with corolla-tube length in the nectarless flowers of .

The plant-pollinator 'arms race' model posits that a major driver of the evolution of elongated corollas in flowers is reciprocal selection for 'morphological fit' between pollinator-tongue length and access distance to nectar (usually corolla-tube length). Evidence for the pollinator-mediated selection on tube length and evolution of multiple, correlated floral traits remains inconclusive. To gain possible insights into the strength of stabilizing selection by assessing standing phenotypic variation, we measured a series of functionally important floral traits, including corolla tube length and 'effective' tube depth and degree of style coiling.

The evolution of flower-pollinator trait matching, and why do some alpine gingers appear to be mismatched?

Background And Aims: Morphological matching between flower and pollinator traits has been documented in diverse plant lineages. Indeed, the matching of corolla tube length and pollinator tongue length has been cited repeatedly as a classic case of coevolution. However, there are many possible evolutionary routes to trait matching.

Testing the effect of individual scent compounds on pollinator attraction in nature using quasi-isogenic Capsella lines.

Premise: Floral scent, usually consisting of multiple compounds, is a complex trait, and its role in pollinator attraction has received increasing attention. However, disentangling the effect of individual floral scent compounds is difficult due to the complexity of isolating the effect of single compounds by traditional methods.

Methods: Using available quasi-isogenic lines (qILs) that were generated as part of the original mapping of the floral scent volatile-related loci CNL1 (benzaldehyde) and TPS2 (β-ocimene) in Capsella, we generated four genotypes that should only differ in these two compounds.

Transitions between the Terrestrial and Epiphytic Habit Drove the Evolution of Seed-Aerodynamic Traits in Orchids.

Orchids are globally distributed, a feature often attributed to their tiny dustlike seeds. They were ancestrally terrestrial but in the Eocene expanded into tree canopies, with some lineages later returning to the ground, providing an evolutionarily replicated system. Because seeds are released closer to the ground in terrestrial species than in epiphytic ones, seed traits in terrestrials may have been under selective pressure to increase seed dispersal efficiency.

Color-matching between pollen and corolla: hiding pollen via visual crypsis?

Visual signals attractive to friends may also attract enemies.  The bright colors of anthers and pollen have generally been thought to attract pollinators. We hypothesize that visual crypsis of anthers, and particularly pollen, should be favored in flowering plants because protection from pollen collectors reduces the loss of male gametes.

Floral adaptations of two lilies: implications for the evolution and pollination ecology of huge trumpet-shaped flowers.

Premise: Evolutionary transitions among floral morphologies, many of which provide evidence for adaptation to novel pollinators, are common. Some trumpet-shaped flowers are among the largest flowers in angiosperms, occurring in different lineages. Our goal was to investigate the role of pollinators in the evolution of these flowers using Lilium.

Flexibility of resource allocation in a hermaphroditic-gynomonoecious herb through deployment of female and male resources in perfect flowers.

Premise Of The Study: It has been hypothesized that two flower types permit flexible allocation of resources to female and male functions, yet empirical evidence for the sex-allocation hypothesis remains scarce in gynomonoecious species. To characterize resource allocation to pistillate and perfect flowers and allocation of perfect flowers between gynomonoecious and hermaphroditic individuals, we examined the flexibility and whether female-biased allocation increases with plant size in the hermaphroditic-gynomonoecious herb .

Methods: Frequency of gynomonoecious individuals, flower production, and plant size were investigated in different populations.

Influence of plant size on female-biased sex allocation in a single-flowered, nectarless herb.

Relative allocation to female and male function in hermaphroditic species often departs from strict equisexuality. Increased femaleness with plant size in animal-pollinated species has been proposed in theory and demonstrated in empirical studies. However, such size-dependent sex allocation (SDS) has not been observed in some insect-pollinated species, throwing doubt on the generalization of SDS, that large plants have decelerated male function investment.

Population genetic diversity of sesarmid crab (Perisesarma bidens) in China based on mitochondrial DNA.

The population genetic diversity of Perisesarma bidens in China was investigated using 627 bp fragment of mtDNA COI gene sequence. A total of 186 individuals were collected from ten localities over most of the species' range and 31 different haplotypes were obtained. The most frequent haplotype was Hap2, which was shared in all ten localities (132 individuals), whereas most haplotypes were rare and existed in only one or two individuals.

Maintenance of self-incompatibility in peripheral populations of a circumboreal woodland subshrub.

Compared with self-incompatible (SI) species, species that shift to self-compatibility (SC) are more likely to colonize a new habitat. Self-incompatibility and fruit-set failure have been widely reported in European populations of Linnaea borealis (twinflower), whereas at the eastern margin of its North American distribution it showed potential SC. We investigated the breeding system of L.

Pistillate flowers experience more pollen limitation and less geitonogamy than perfect flowers in a gynomonoecious herb.

Gynomonoecy, a sexual system in which plants have both pistillate (female) flowers and perfect (hermaphroditic) flowers, occurs in at least 15 families, but the differential reproductive strategies of the two flower morphs within one individual remain unclear. Racemes of Eremurus anisopterus (Xanthorrhoeaceae) have basal pistillate and distal perfect flowers. To compare sex allocation and reproductive success between the two flower morphs, we measured floral traits, pollinator preferences, and pollen movement in the field.