Evolutionary change in seed size among some legume species: The effects of phylogeny

Abstract

The importance of phylogenetic effects in controlling seed size variation at the macroevolutionary levels was examined using species of a well-defined, monophyletic family, the Leguminosae. A nested ANOVA was used to separate variance components at the various taxonomic levels such as subfamily, genus, and subgenus. Statistical significance was found at most of the taxonomic levels examined, which suggests that phylogeny as shown by the accepted taxonomy of the family, exerted a substantial influence over seed size variation. Thus, there appears to be a characteristic mean seed size for each genus and subgenus. The overall positive correlation between plant height and seed size was interpreted as a scaling of seed size to plant height. When the effect of plant height was controlled, the amount of variance changed to some extent across taxonomic levels, though resulting in no change in statistical significance at various taxonomic levels. This results indicate that phylogenetic effects in seed size variation among congeneric or consubgeneric groupings were largely independent of allometric effects. The patterns of variance components and intraclass correlation coefficients for seed size differed to some extent among subfamilies. The difference in those patterns among taxa will reflect evolutionary change more closely with larger sample sizes. A simple inverse relationship between seed size and number per fruit among related legume species was difficult to generalize. This was perhaps due to phylogenetic constraints on seed size and/or seed number (or ovule number). These results demonstrate that phylogeny and plant height affect seed size variation among related species.