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AOBPreview published online on April 23, 2008
Annals of Botany, doi:10.1093/aob/mcn057
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Uncoupled Geographical Variation between Leaves and Flowers in a South-Andean Proteaceae

Vanina R. Chalcoff*, Cecilia Ezcurra and Marcelo A. Aizen

Laboratorio Ecotono, Centro Regional Universitario Bariloche, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Quintral 1250, 8400 Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina

* For correspondence. E-mail vchalcoff{at}gmail.com

Received: 4 January 2008    Returned for revision: 5 March 2008    Accepted: 20 March 2008   

Background and Aims: Geographical variation in foliar and floral traits and their degree of coupling can provide relevant information on the relative importance of abiotic, biotic and even neutral factors acting at geographical scales as generators of evolutionary novelty. Geographical variation was studied in leaves and flowers of Embothrium coccineum, a species that grows along abrupt environmental gradients and exhibits contrasting pollinator assemblages in the southern Andes.

Methods: Five foliar and eight floral morphological characters were considered from 32 populations, and their patterns of variation and covariation were analysed within and among populations, together with their relationship with environmental variables, using both univariate and multivariate methods. The relationships between foliar and floral morphological variation and geographical distance between populations were compared with Mantel permutation tests.

Key Results: Leaf and flower traits were clearly uncoupled within populations and weakly associated among populations. Whereas geographical variation in foliar traits was mostly related to differences in precipitation associated with geographical longitude, variation in floral traits was not.

Conclusions: These patterns suggest that leaves and flowers responded to different evolutionary forces, environmental (i.e. rainfall) in the case of leaves, and biotic (i.e. pollinators) or genetic drift in the case of flowers. This study supports the view that character divergence at a geographical scale can be moulded by different factors acting in an independent fashion.

Key words: Embothrium coccineum, Proteaceae, geographical variation, foliar morphology, floral morphology, uncoupling, selective forces, environmental conditions, pollinators, south Andes


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