| Abstract Detail
Monday Afternoon Morphology and Taxonomy Diggle, Pamela K. [1]. "Great and curious blunder in dame nature" (C. Darwin 1860): An evo-devo analysis of the origin and diversification of andromonoecy in Solanum. ANDROMONOECY, a sexual system in which plants produce both hermaphroditic and staminate flowers, is common in the genus Solanum. Comparative analyses of hermaphroditic and andromonoecious species have provided insight into the developmental transitions associated with the origin and diversification of this sexual system. Functional andromonoecy occurs in hermaphroditic species of ,em>Solanum,/em> as a phenotypically plastic response to the resource demands of developing fruit. Due to existing developmental gradients within inflorescences, loss of ovary function is specific to distal flowers. In the common ancestor of the andromonoecious taxa, the developmental innovation of pre-anthesis termination of gynoecial maturation resulted in the evolution of morphologically staminate flowers. This evolutionary transition drew upon the gradient of developmental potential already present in the hermaphroditic ancestor and affected only distal flowers. The production of morphologically staminate flowers was initially a plastic response to the presence of developing fruit. Subsequently, this same phenotype of staminate flower production in distal positions became a fixed aspect of the phenotype in more derived taxa.
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1 - University of Colorado, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA
Keywords:
none specified
Session: SOL03-1
Location: Ballroom AB/Monona Terrace
Date: Monday, July 24th, 2006
Time: 1:30 PM
Abstract ID:233 |
