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A combinatorial approach to angiosperm pollen morphology.

Luke Mander1

  • 1Department of Environment, Earth and Ecosystems, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK luke.mander@open.ac.uk.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|November 25, 2016
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Flowering plants exhibit vast pollen diversity. A combinatorial approach generated millions of theoretical pollen shapes, revealing Neotropical rainforests harbor immense, largely unique, angiosperm pollen morphologies.

Keywords:
combinatoricsmorphologymorphospaceplantspollen

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Area of Science:

  • Botany
  • Ecology
  • Computational Biology

Background:

  • Angiosperms (flowering plants) display remarkable diversity, evident in their pollen grain morphology.
  • Pollen exhibits extensive variation in shape and surface patterning, reflecting evolutionary adaptations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To explore angiosperm pollen morphology using enumerative combinatorics.
  • To generate and visualize a theoretical morphospace of pollen types.
  • To compare theoretical pollen morphotypes with actual species from Neotropical rainforests.

Main Methods:

  • Algorithmic generation of angiosperm pollen morphotypes by combining discrete character states.
  • Enumeration of 3,643,200 theoretical pollen morphotypes.
  • Visualization of the theoretical morphospace using parallel-coordinates plots.
  • Mapping pollen data from 1008 Neotropical angiosperm species onto the theoretical morphospace.

Main Results:

  • The study generated over 3.6 million theoretical pollen morphotypes, creating a comprehensive morphospace.
  • Mapping Neotropical angiosperm pollen revealed significant morphological diversity, with most morphotypes unique to single species.
  • Pollen morphotype repetition across higher taxa at Barro Colorado Island (BCI) indicated evolutionary constraints and convergent evolution.

Conclusions:

  • Neotropical rainforests are reservoirs of exceptional angiosperm pollen morphological diversity.
  • A combinatorial approach effectively addresses the complexity of discrete character combinations in morphology.
  • This methodology is applicable to studying organismal form across diverse taxa characterized by discrete traits.