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The seed morphospace, a new contribution towards the multidimensional study of angiosperm sexual reproductive biology

Research output: Contribution to journalA1: Web of Science-articlepeer-review

  • Angelino Carta
  • Filip Vandelook
  • Santiago Ramirez-Barahona
  • Si-Chong Chen
  • John Dickie
  • Tina Steinbrecher
  • Costas A. Thanos
  • Angela T. Moles
  • Gerhard Leubner-Metzger
  • Efisio Mattana
Background The evolutionary success of flowering plants is associated with the vast diversity of their reproductive structures. Despite recent progress in understanding angiosperm-wide trends in floral structure and evolution, a synthetic view of the diversity in seed form and function across angiosperms is lacking.Scope Here we present a roadmap to synthesize the diversity of seed forms in extant angiosperms, relying on the morphospace concept, i.e. a mathematical representation which relates multiple traits and describes the realized morphologies. We provide recommendations on how to broaden the range of measurable traits beyond mass, by using key morphological traits representative of the embryo, endosperm and seed coat but also fruit attributes (e.g. dehiscence, fleshiness). These key traits were used to construct and analyse a morphospace to detect evolutionary trends and gain insight into how morphological traits relate to seed functions. Finally, we outline challenges and future research directions, combining the morphospace with macroevolutionary comparative methods to underline the drivers that gave rise to the diversity of observed seed forms.Conclusions We conclude that this multidimensional approach has the potential, although still untapped, to improve our understanding of covariation among reproductive traits, and further elucidate angiosperm reproductive biology as a whole.
Original languageEnglish
JournalAnnals of Botany
Volume134
Issue number5
Pages (from-to)701-710
Number of pages10
ISSN0305-7364
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 13-Nov-2024

    Research areas

  • Angiosperms, comparative seed biology, seed coat, embryo, endosperm, gymnosperms, macroevolution, seed mass

Documents

  • mcae099

    Final published version, 1.96 MB, PDF document

DOI

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