Floral specialization and angiosperm diversity: phenotypic divergence, fitness trade-offs and realized pollination accuracy

This review considers the role of reproductive factors in the evolutionary success of flowering plants, with emphasis on flowers and pollination. Flowers are complex structures that have varying degrees of integration of parts and surprising evolutionary lability. Diversification of floral form usually accompanies plant diversification by speciation. This correlation has traditionally been interpreted as the result of floral specialization increasing speciation rates. However, another possibility is that species diversity generates selection for divergent specialized flowers when related species occur together, thereby reducing extinction rates.

• Publication year

  2014

• Venue

  AoB Plants

• Publication date

  2014-01-16

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1093/aobpla/plu003PMID 24790124PMCID 4038416
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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