Month: September 2022

KEY FUSION INNOVATION. "Syncarpy is considered to be a key innovation, estimated to have evolved independently at least 17 times and correlated with increased rates of fertilization and enhanced offspring fitness." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

POLLEN TUBE FUSION. "Congenitally united carpels benefit from the development of the compitum, a single pollen tube transmitting tract resulting from the fusion in the stigmatic region. This enables flowers with multiple ovaries to maintain centralized pollen tube selection, which has an adaptive advantage for targeted fertilization." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

MONOCOT EVOLUTION. "The compitum is considered a key innovation that evolved independently in monocots and in eudicots with various degrees of fusion involved in the formation of the structure. Both syncarpy and the additional fusion of the stigmatic area to form a functional compitum are cases in which fusion provides an adaptive advantage." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

LACK OF FUSION. "Considering the ancestral angiosperm, it is likely that lack of fusion among and between most organs is the ancestral condition for the angiosperm flower, with the potential exception of basal fusion of the outermost perianth. For example, fusion of the carpel margins to form an enclosed carpel arose multiple times and is not considered homologous owing to the diversity of carpel types degrees of completeness of fusion." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

GYNOECIUM FUSIONS. "The fusion of individual carpels into a gynoecium occurred several times independently among angiosperms and proceeded through separate developmental mechanisms; either via fusion at the centre of the gynoecium resulting in axile placentation or fusion into a unilocular ovary with parietal placentation. Both types may have evolved independently from unfused carpels." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

LATER FUSION EVOLUTION. "Fusion of parts does not become a major element in angiosperm evolution until the establishment of whorled floral phyllotaxy and the establishment of a fixed meristem, or the arrangement of the flower into defined whorls comprising regular multiples of organs." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

EARLY FUSIONS. "However, the capacity for fusion of plant parts was clearly present in early angiosperms, as basal fusion of the outermost perianth can even be found in the early diverging Amborella, in which a short fusion zone among the tepals occurs before the fusion with the stamen whorl, as well as in the early diverging lineages, including Cabomba, Canellales, Aristolochiaceae, Myristicaceae and Degeneria (Magnolialaes)." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

LABILE FUSIONS. "Fusion tends to be more labile in the outermost perianth than in petals, a phenomenon that may predict different genetic mechanisms underlying organ separation. In some cases, developmental characters within a flower are highly correlated with fusion of particular tissues; for example, early fusion of petals is predominantly found in flowers with inferior ovaries and reduced sepal whorl(s)." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

MULTIFACETED FUSIONS. "Fusion of organs is a multifaceted process that contributes in predictable ways to the diversity of floral form, providing opportunities for comparative analyses of adaptive floral development across angiosperms." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

BOUNDARIES. "In order for lateral primordia to distinguish themselves as a population of cells separate from the shoot apical meristem (SAM), a meristem-to-organ boundary must be created. Mutants lacking appropriate genetic mechanisms for separation of organ primordia into distinct lateral organs are considered to be mutants in the process of ‘boundary formation’." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn