Correlated evolution of flower size and seed number in flowering plants (monocotyledons)

Kin selection theory predicts that a parent may minimize deleterious effects of competition among seeds developing within ovaries by increasing the genetic relatedness of seeds within an ovary. Alternatively, the number of developing seeds could be reduced to one or a few. It has also been suggested that single or few seeded fruits may be correlated with small flowers, and multi-ovulate ovaries or many seeded fruits may be associated with large flowers with specialized pollination mechanisms. We examined the correlation between flower size and seed number in 69 families of monocotyledons to assess if correlations are significant and independent of phylogeny.

We first examined the effect of phylogenetic history on the evolution of these two traits, flower size and seed number, and then mapped correlations between them on the latest phylogenetic tree of monocotyledons.

The results provide phylogenetically robust evidence of strong correlated evolution between flower size and seed number and show that correlated evolution of traits is not constrained by phylogenetic history of taxa. Moreover, the two character combinations, small flowers and a single or few seeds per fruit, and large flowers and many seeded fruits, have persisted in monocotyledons longer than other trait combinations.

The analyses support the suggestion that most angiosperms may fall into two categories, one with large flowers and many seeded fruits and the other with small flowers and single or few seeded fruits, and kin selection within ovaries may explain the observed patterns.