Description
- Abstract:
- Serotiny, or the retention of seeds on a parent plant, is a dispersal strategy seen across many groups of plants. Serotiny may be correlated with the evolution of other reproductive traits, such as robust woody cones or fruits that protect these long-held seeds, but this has rarely been analyzed in an explicit phylogenetic framework. We tested whether serotinous plants produce larger, more robust reproductive structures using the Cupressaceae clade of conifers. Using cone size measurements of cones from 83 species housed in herbarium collections, we found that serotinous lineages repeatedly evolve larger and more robust cones, consistent with the idea that these structures do protect seeds. This study illustrates how seed dispersal ecology, particularly serotiny, can strongly influence the evolution of plant reproductive structures.
Citation
Swarup, Karishma,
"The evolution of cone and seed size in serotinous conifers"
(2017).
Summer Research Symposium.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/38wf-d425
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Summer Research Symposium
Each year, Brown University showcases the research of its undergraduates at the Summer Research Symposium. More than half of the student-researchers are UTRA recipients, while others receive funding from a variety of Brown-administered and national programs and fellowships and go …...