The effect of flower position on variation and covariation in floral traits in a wild hermaphrodite plant.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Floral traits within plants can vary with flower position or flowering time. Within an inflorescence, sexual allocation of early produced basal flowers is often female-biased while later produced distal flowers are male-biased. Such temporal adjustment of floral resource has been considered one of the potential advantages of modularity (regarding a flower as a module) in hermaphrodites. However, flowers are under constraints of independent evolution of a given trait. To understand flower diversification within inflorescences, here we examine variation and covariation in floral traits within racemes at the individual and the maternal family level respectively in an alpine herb Aconitum gymnandrum (Ranunculaceae).

Results

We found that floral traits varied significa

SUBMITTER: Zhao ZG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3095358 | biostudies-literature | 2010 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature