Significant Potential Levels of Hierarchical Phenotypic Selection in a Woody Perennial Plant, Cistus ladanifer

Abstract

Cistus ladanifer L. is a Mediterranenn woody perennial species (with two varieties: var. albiflorus and var. maculatus) that follows an obligatory seeder strategy for post-fire seedling establishment. Large numbers of seeds are produced inside fruit capsules split up into compartments. The capsules are the result of apical meristems and appear in different shoot modules and branches throughout the plant. Seed production, used here as a measure of fitness, can thus be analyzed hierarchically in the different structural levels of the plant. A nested analysis of variance was used to test the heterogeneity in the reproductive output of this species in the hierarchical structural arrangement of the individual plants, in order to provide empirical evidence on the potential of hierarchical phenotypic selection, a theoretical framework recently developed for the evolutive processes in modular organisms