Abstract
Masting characterizes large, intermittent and highly synchronous seeding events among individual plants and is found throughout the plant Tree of Life (ToL). Although masting can increase plant fitness, little is known about whether it results in evolutionary changes across entire clades, such as by promoting speciation or enhanced trait selection. Here, we tested if masting has macroevolutionary consequences by combining the largest existing dataset of population-level reproductive time series and time-calibrated phylogenetic tree of vascular plants. We found that the coefficient of variation (CVp) of reproductive output for 307 species covaried with evolutionary history, and more so within clades than expected by random. Speciation rates estimated at the species level were highest at intermediate values of CVp and regional-scale synchrony (Sr) in seed production, that is, there were unimodal correlations. There was no support for monotonic correlations between either CVp or Sr and rates of speciation or seed size evolution. These results were robust to different sampling decisions, and we found little bias in our dataset compared with the wider plant ToL. While masting is often adaptive and encompasses a rich diversity of reproductive behaviours, we suggest it may have few consequences beyond the species level.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The ecology and evolution of synchronized seed production in plants’.
Highlights
Mast seeding or masting describes synchronous seed production among individual plants and populations that corresponds with large, intermittent reproductive events [1,2]
We identified the best model by comparing Akaike information criterion (AIC) weights (AICw) [51]
Mast seeding is observed in many species [3,4,5,11,12], but here we found that its fitness benefits translate into few macroevolutionary changes
Summary
Mast seeding or masting describes synchronous seed production among individual plants and populations that corresponds with large, intermittent reproductive events [1,2]. Large inter-annual variation in seed set and high synchrony in seed production [2,18] can influence macroevolution through selective pressures from dispersers or predators of seeds. Large inter-annual variation in seed production which attracts seed dispersers to fruit displays in mast years is likely to intensify selection on reproductive traits from seed dispersers. In species with a large CVp, seed predators and dispersers may have contrasting outcomes on the selection of phenotypic traits associated with reproduction, e.g. seed size (figure 1d,e). The potential selection effects can act in opposite ways, overall there are more mechanisms for promoting faster trait evolution with higher values of both CVp and Sr through pollinators, seed dispersers and pollen competition (figure 1). Using the largest available estimates of species-specific speciation [26] and seed size evolution [27] for vascular plants, we tested if species with more extreme reproductive behaviours were evolving more quickly in number and seed phenotype
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