Construction costs and tradeoffs in carnivorous pitcher plant leaves: towards a pitcher leaf economics spectrum.

Background: Leaf economics theory holds that physiological constraints to photosynthesis have a role in the coordinated evolution of multiple leaf traits, an idea that can be extended to carnivorous plants occupying a particular trait space that is constrained by key costs and benefits. Pitcher traps are modified leaves that may face steep photosynthetic costs: a high-volume, three-dimensional tubular structure may be less efficient than a flat lamina. While past research has investigated the photosynthetic costs of pitchers, the exact suite of constraints shaping pitcher trait variation remain under-explored, including constraints to carnivorous function.

Evolutionary footprints of a cold relic in a rapidly warming world.

With accelerating global warming, understanding the evolutionary dynamics of plant adaptation to environmental change is increasingly urgent. Here, we reveal the enigmatic history of the genus (Brassicaceae) a Pleistocene relic that originated from a drought-adapted Mediterranean sister genus during the Miocene. rapidly diversified and adapted to circum-Arctic regions and other cold-characterized habitat types during the Pleistocene.

High rates of evolution preceded shifts to sex-biased gene expression in , the most sexually dimorphic angiosperms.

Differences between males and females are usually more subtle in dioecious plants than animals, but strong sexual dimorphism has evolved convergently in the South African Cape plant genus . Such sexual dimorphism in leaf size is expected largely to be due to differential gene expression between the sexes. We compared patterns of gene expression in leaves among 10 species across the genus.

A neutral model for the loss of recombination on sex chromosomes.

The loss of recombination between sex chromosomes has occurred repeatedly throughout nature, with important implications for their subsequent evolution. Explanations for this remarkable convergence have generally invoked only adaptive processes (e.g.

Introgression is widespread in the radiation of carnivorous Nepenthes pitcher plants.

Introgression and hybridization are important processes in plant evolution, but they are difficult to study from a phylogenetic perspective, because they conflict with the bifurcating evolutionary history typically depicted in phylogenetic models. The role of hybridization in plant evolution is best documented in the form of allo-polyploidizations. In contrast, homoploid hybridization and introgression are less explored, although they may be crucial in adaptive radiations.

Population Genomics of the "Arcanum" Species Group in Wild Tomatoes: Evidence for Separate Origins of Two Self-Compatible Lineages.

Given their diverse mating systems and recent divergence, wild tomatoes ( section ) have become an attractive model system to study ecological divergence, the build-up of reproductive barriers, and the causes and consequences of the breakdown of self-incompatibility. Here we report on a lesser-studied group of species known as the "Arcanum" group, comprising the nominal species , , and . The latter two taxa are self-compatible but are thought to self-fertilize at different rates, given their distinct manifestations of the morphological "selfing syndrome.

Identification of sex-linked markers in the sexually cryptic coco de mer: are males and females produced in equal proportions?

(coco de mer) is a long-lived dioecious palm in which male and female plants are visually indistinguishable when immature, only becoming sexually dimorphic as adults, which in natural forest can take as much as 50 years. Most adult populations in the Seychelles exhibit biased sex ratios, but it is unknown whether this is due to different proportions of male and female plants being produced or to differential mortality. In this study, we developed sex-linked markers in using ddRAD sequencing, enabling us to reliably determine the gender of immature individuals.

Sex is determined by XY chromosomes across the radiation of dioecious pitcher plants.

Species with separate sexes (dioecy) are a minority among flowering plants, but dioecy has evolved multiple times independently in their history. The sex-determination system and sex-linked genomic regions are currently identified in a limited number of dioecious plants only. Here, we study the sex-determination system in a genus of dioecious plants that lack heteromorphic sex chromosomes and are not amenable to controlled breeding: pitcher plants.

A novel type of nutritional ant-plant interaction: ant partners of carnivorous pitcher plants prevent nutrient export by dipteran pitcher infauna.

Many plants combat herbivore and pathogen attack indirectly by attracting predators of their herbivores. Here we describe a novel type of insect-plant interaction where a carnivorous plant uses such an indirect defence to prevent nutrient loss to kleptoparasites. The ant Camponotus schmitzi is an obligate inhabitant of the carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes bicalcarata in Borneo.

'Insect aquaplaning' on a superhydrophilic hairy surface: how Heliamphora nutans Benth. pitcher plants capture prey.

Trichomes are a common feature of plants and perform important and diverse functions. Here, we show that the inward-pointing hairs on the inner wall of insect-trapping Heliamphora nutans pitchers are highly wettable, causing water droplets to spread rapidly across the surface. Wetting strongly enhanced the slipperiness and increased the capture rate for ants from 29 to 88 per cent.