Widespread evolution of poricidal flowers: A striking example of morphological convergence across flowering plants

AbstractThe evolution of tube-like floral morphologies that control pollen release via small openings (functionally poricidal flowers) represents a taxonomically and geographically widespread instance of repeated and independent evolution of a functionally similar morphology. Poricidal flowers are also often closely associated with buzz pollination by bees. Yet we lack an updated angiosperm-wide survey of their phylogenetic distribution. We identify all known angiosperm genera containing poricidal flowers via a literature survey. We determined their phylogenetic distribution and minimum number of independent gains and losses via a species-level angiosperm-wide phylogeny. We estimated if evolution of poricidal flowers is associated with changes in speciation/extinction via diversification rate analyses. Poricidal flowers occur across 87 angiosperm families and 639 genera containing >28,000 species. At the species level, an average of 205 independent gains and 215 losses of poricidal flowers occurred. Angiosperm-wide analyses suggest an early burst in poricidal evolution, but no differences in net diversification (origination-extinction) between non-poricidal and poricidal taxa. Analyses for two focal families however indicate strong context-dependent effects of poricidal flowers on diversification. Poricidal evolution thus represents a large-scale example of convergent evolution in floral form, but effects on diversification appear to be strongly contingent on phylogenetic and ecological background.