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(American Journal of Botany. 2009;96:1159-1167.) doi: 10.3732/ajb.0800183 © 2009 Botanical Society of America, Inc.

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Ovule number per flower in a world of unpredictable pollination¹

² School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria 3800, Australia ³ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260 USA ⁴ Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697 USA ⁵ Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742 USA ⁶ Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4J1 ⁷ Department of Biology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri 63130 USA ⁸ Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106 USA ⁹ Department of Biology, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325 USA ¹⁰ Department of Botany, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078-3013 USA ¹¹ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4

ABSTRACT

The number of ovules per flower varies over several orders of magnitude among angiosperms. Here we consider evidence that stochastic uncertainty in pollen receipt and ovule fertilization has been a selective factor in the evolution of ovule number per flower. We hypothesize that stochastic variation in floral mating success creates an advantage to producing many ovules per flower because a plant will often gain more fitness from occasional abundant seed production in randomly successful flowers than it loses in resource commitment to less successful flowers. Greater statistical dispersion in pollination and fertilization among flowers increases the frequency of windfall success, which should increase the strength of selection for greater ovule number per flower. We therefore looked for evidence of a positive relationship between ovule number per flower and the statistical dispersion of pollen receipt or seed number per flower in a comparative analysis involving 187 angiosperm species. We found strong evidence of such a relationship. Our results support the hypothesis that unpredictable variation in mating success at the floral level has been a factor in the evolution of ovule packaging in angiosperms.

Key Words: bet hedging • ovule • pollination • reproductive evolution • seed set • stigmatic pollen load

Received for publication 2 June 2008. Accepted for publication 29 January 2009.

FOOTNOTES

¹ The authors thank colleagues for providing unpublished information used in this analysis: R. Brookes, C. Goodwillie, A.-L. Jacquemart, S. R. Kephart, F. Lloret, A. C. McCall, C. T. Schick, and H. D. Young. They also thank two anonymous reviewers who raised insightful queries that helped the authors improve the explanation of their analysis. This work was conducted as part of the Pollen Limitation Working Group supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, a Center funded by NSF, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the State of California.

¹² Author for correspondence (e-mail: martin.burd{at}sci.monash.edu.au)

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