Ecology and Evolution of Flowers PDF Download

Author: Lawrence D. Harder
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198570856
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Floral biology, floral function, sexual systems, diversification.

Author: Lawrence D. Harder
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191513865
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The reproductive organs and mating biology of angiosperms exhibit greater variety than those of any other group of organisms. Flowers and inflorescences are also the most diverse structures produced by angiosperms, and floral traits provide some of the most compelling examples of evolution by natural selection. Given that flowering plants include roughly 250,000 species, their reproductive diversity will not be explained easily by continued accumulation of case studies of individual species. Instead a more strategic approach is now required, which seeks to identify general principles concerning the role of ecological function in the evolution of reproductive diversity. The Ecology and Evolution of Flowers uses this approach to expose new insights into the functional basis of floral diversity, and presents the very latest theoretical and empirical research on floral evolution. Floral biology is a dynamic and growing area and this book, written by the leading internationally recognized researchers in this field, reviews current progress in understanding the evolution and function of flowers. Chapters contain both new research findings and synthesis. Major sections in turn examine functional aspects of floral traits and sexual systems, the ecological influences on reproductive adaptation, and the role of floral biology in angiosperm diversification. Overall, this integrated treatment illustrates the role of floral function and evolution in the generation of angiosperm biodiversity. This advanced textbook is suitable for graduate level students taking courses in plant ecology, evolution, systematics, biodiversity and conservation. It will also be of interest and use to a broader audience of plant scientists seeking an authoritative overview of recent advances in floral biology.

Author: David G. Lloyd
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461311659
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Studies in floral biology are largely concerned with how flowers function to promote pollination and mating. The role of pollination in governing mating patterns in plant populations inextricably links the evolution of pollination and mating systems. Despite the close functional link between pollination and mating, research conducted for most of this century on these two fundamental aspects of plant reproduction has taken quite separate courses. This has resulted in suprisingly little cross-fertilization between the fields of pollination biology on the one hand and plant mating-system studies on the other. The separation of the two areas has largely resulted from the different backgrounds and approaches adopted by workers in these fields. Most pollination studies have been ecological in nature with a strong emphasis on field research and until recently few workers considered how the mechanics of pollen dispersal might influence mating patterns and individual plant fitness. In contrast, work on plant mating patterns has often been conducted in an ecological vacuum largely devoid of information on the environmental and demographic context in which mating occurs. Mating-system research has been dominated by population genetic and theoretical perspectives with surprisingly little consideration given to the proximate ecological factors responsible for causing a particular pattern of mating to occur.

Author: Guillaume Tcherkez
Publisher: Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781578083114
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book delves in detail the intimate functioning of the flower, whether it is on the biochemical, cellular, molecular, or the organism scale. It explains the form and function of the flower, not only from the physiology and developmental biology as-pects, but also from ecology and evolutionary sciences, integrating genetic, demo-graphic, and biogeographical perspectives.

Author: Pat Willmer
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691128618
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 790

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Book Description
Pollination and Floral Ecology is a very comprehensive reference work to all aspects of pollination biology.

Author: Else Marie Friis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139496387
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 597

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Book Description
The recent discovery of diverse fossil flowers and floral organs in Cretaceous strata has revealed astonishing details about the structural and systematic diversity of early angiosperms. Exploring the rich fossil record that has accumulated over the last three decades, this is a unique study of the evolutionary history of flowering plants from their earliest phases in obscurity to their dominance in modern vegetation. The discussion provides comprehensive biological and geological background information, before moving on to summarise the fossil record in detail. Including previously unpublished results based on research into Early and Late Cretaceous fossil floras from Europe and North America, the authors draw on direct palaeontological evidence of the pattern of angiosperm evolution through time. Synthesising palaeobotanical data with information from living plants, this unique book explores the latest research in the field, highlighting connections with phylogenetic systematics, structure and the biology of extant angiosperms.

Author: Victor Rico-Gray
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226713547
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Ants are probably the most dominant insect group on Earth, representing ten to fifteen percent of animal biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. Flowering plants, meanwhile, owe their evolutionary success to an array of interspecific interactions—such as pollination, seed dispersal, and herbivory—that have helped to shape their great diversity. The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions brings together findings from the scientific literature on the coevolution of ants and plants to provide a better understanding of the unparalleled success of these two remarkable groups, of interspecific interactions in general, and ultimately of terrestrial biological communities. The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions synthesizes the dynamics of ant-plant interactions, including the sources of variation in their outcomes. Victor Rico-Gray and Paulo S. Oliveira capture both the emerging appreciation of the importance of these interactions within ecosystems and the developing approaches that place studies of these interactions into a broader ecological and evolutionary context. The collaboration of two internationally renowned scientists, The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions will become a standard reference for understanding the complex interactions between these two taxa.

Author: Peter K. Endress
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521565103
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 530

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Book Description
A unique account of the structure, biology and evolution of tropical flowering plants.

Author: Adam Bryant Roddy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 107

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Book Description
Flowers have long been considered one of the hallmarks of angiosperm evolution. They are morphologically complex structures that both promote efficient pollination and protect the developing embryo. When it was championed in 1793 by Christian Konrad Sprengel, this view of the role of flowers in reproduction, however, was highly controversial: how could a form so beautiful and pure as a flower ever be involved in something as vulgar as reproduction? Sprengel and his predecessor, Josef Köhlreuter, are considered the founders of pollination biology, and their work set the stage for that of Charles Darwin nearly a century later. Darwin saw the interaction between flowers and their pollinators as a prime example of the power of natural selection. This approach to studying the evolution of flowers-of focusing on the biotic drivers of floral morphological change-has dominated our understanding and interpretation of floral evolution. Yet, new evidence suggests that extrinsic, abiotic factors and the costs of producing and maintaining flowers may also have influenced the evolution of floral form. These non-pollinator agents of selection could represent another major shift in our understanding of how flowers have evolved. The series of studies presented in this dissertation takes one important resource, water, and examines how the requirements of providing water to flowers may influence their functioning and evolution. Two complementary approaches are used in these studies: (1) physiological measurements of the dynamics of water use on a few species and (2) comparisons of hydraulic traits for diverse sets of species. Together, these two approaches show the variability of flower water use, the anatomical traits associated with the flux of water through flowers, and how these physiological traits-and, by extension, the water requirements of flowers-vary among extant species. Together, these studies support the conclusion that maintaining flower water balance has been an important factor influencing floral evolution and, more generally, angiosperm ecology. Three studies are presented that seek to measure, using different approaches, how the water flux to flowers and the hydraulic efficiency of flowers varies among species (Chapters 1-3), within species throughout floral development (Chapters 1 and 2), and diurnally with changing environmental conditions (Chapter 3). Using a new implementation of the heat ratio method for measuring sap flow (Chapter 1), I found that sap flow velocities to flowers and inflorescences vary diurnally, throughout floral development, and among species and microhabitats. Such high variability suggested that a better approach to comparing the hydraulic architecture of flowers would be to measure the maximum efficiency of the floral hydraulic system. In Chapter 2, I quantified for a phylogenetically diverse set of species the maximum hydraulic conductance of whole flowers. This, too, was highly variable among species, as were other hydraulic traits, and the variation in all traits was driven by just two genera of early-divergent angiosperm lineages. Variation in these traits highlighted the existence of two seemingly discrete hydraulic strategies: one strategy is to maintain a high hydraulic conductance and continuously import water via the xylem while the other strategy is to have a low hydraulic conductance with long water turnover times, slow desiccation rates, and presumably high hydraulic capacitance. Investigating the tradeoffs among these strategies further, Chapter 3 focused on characterizing the water relations of flowers of two Calycanthus species, which had among the highest hydraulic conductances measured in Chapter 2. Consistent with my predictions, high hydraulic capacitance in flowers mitigates the reliance on continuous xylem delivery of water. As a result, despite maintaining a high maximum hydraulic conductance (Chapter 2), Calycanthus flowers hydraulically underperform most of the time, reaching their maximum hydraulic conductance only when turgor loss is already inevitable. The results from Chapters 2 and 3 together suggest that the monocots and eudicots, compared to the ANITA grade and magnoliids, developed thicker cuticles and reduced their stomatal abundances, which together reduce rates of water loss from flowers and prolonged the time that these flowers can remain turgid without the import of new water. Having characterized in Chapter 2 some of the anatomical traits that correlate with the hydraulic capacity of flowers, I sought in Chapters 4 and 5 to examine for a large set of species how these traits have evolved and vary among species. Specifically, I asked three questions: (1) Has there been coordinated evolution of water balance traits within flowers, which would suggest that maintaining water balance has been an important component in floral evolution? (2) Is there modularity in hydraulic trait evolution, such that flower and leaf traits have evolved independently? (3) Have hydraulic traits been under natural selection? The results from these two chapters strongly support the conclusions that floral hydraulic traits are under selection, that maintaining water balance has been an important component of floral trait evolution, and that hydraulic traits have evolved independently in flowers and leaves. These results show, for the first time, the importance of water balance in floral evolution and highlight that the physiological demands of and constraints on flowers may provide a strong counterbalance to selection by animal pollinators. As yet, studies of the physiology of flowers have received little attention and have been ignored in physiological trait databases. As a result, there has been no overarching theory describing or predicting patterns of variance in floral physiological traits. This series of studies is a first attempt at providing such a framework for predicting how floral physiological traits may vary among species and how this may differ between reproductive and vegetative traits. Although it focuses only on traits associated with the movement of water, the results show that there may be consistent trait associations and syndromes among flowers, regardless of morphology. This should be a first step in understanding how flowers function physiologically and how their functioning may vary with a variety of ecological factors and over evolutionary timescales.

Author: Spencer C. H. Barrett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226038165
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The first volume to address the study of evolutionary transitions in plants, Major Evolutionary Transitions in Flowering Plant Reproduction brings together compelling work from the three areas of significant innovation in plant biology: evolution and adaptation in flowers and pollination, mating patterns and gender strategies, and asexual reproduction and polyploidy. Spencer C. H. Barrett assembles here a distinguished group of authors who address evolutionary transitions using comparative and phylogenetic approaches, the tools of genomics, population genetics, and theoretical modeling, and through studies in development and field experiments in ecology. With special focus on evolutionary transitions and shifts in reproductive characters—key elements of biological diversification and research in evolutionary biology—Major Evolutionary Transitions in Flowering Plant Reproduction is the most up-to-date treatment of a fast-moving area of evolutionary biology and ecology.