Water from the rock: Ancient aquatic angiosperms flow from the fossil record

Les, Donald H.

doi:10.1073/pnas.1514280112

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 18 publications

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“…However, there may still be another possibility that aquatic plants keep similar allometric relationships to their terrestrial relatives, because aquatic angiosperms have undergone hundreds of events of plant ‘regression’ evolution from terrestrial ancestors ( Sculthorpe, 1967 ; Cook, 1988 ; Les, 2015 ; Meseguer et al , 2022 ), probably leading to a high phylogenetic conservatism in stomata and petiole traits of aquatic plants and similar allometric relationships to their terrestrial relatives ( Liu et al , 2015 ; Chen et al , 2022 ). Thus, comparative analyses on the allometric scaling across species should consider phylogeny, and we do not know whether the allometric scaling between leaf stomata and petiole xylem traits of floating-leaved plants still exist despite the different phylogenetic backgrounds.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Allometric relationships between leaf and petiole traits across 31 floating-leaved plants reveal a different adaptation pattern from terrestrial plants

Liu

Baastrup‐Spohr

et al. 2023

Annals of Botany

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Background and Aims Allometric scaling between stomata and xylem for terrestrial woody plants is a widely observed pattern that may be constrained by water transport. Floating-leaved plants, a special life form of aquatic plants, have leaves in direct contact with both air and water and a poorly developed xylem that may not be limited by water supply as for terrestrial plants. However, whether such an allometric scaling relationship still exists in floating-leaved plants has been unexplored. Methods We analyzed 31 floating-leaved species/varieties with a wide-range leaf area covering six magnitude orders. For all 31 floating-leaved plants, we studied the allometric relationships between leaf area and petiole transverse area, and between total stomatal area and petiole vascular area. Key Results The slopes of both relationships were similar to the slope of the allometric relationship (1.23) between the total stomatal area and xylem area of 53 terrestrial plants. However, for ten of them with xylem that can be clearly defined, the strong positive relationship between the total stomatal area and the petiole xylem area had a significantly smaller slope than that of terrestrial plants (0.64 v.s. 1.23). Furthermore, after considering phylogeny, the scaling relationships between total stomatal area and petiole traits in floating-leaved plants remained significant. Conclusions We speculated that for floating-leaved plants, the hyperallometric relationship (slope > 1) between the construction of leaf/stoma and petiole was promoted by the high demand for photosynthesis thus more leaves/stomata. While the hypoallometric relationship (slope < 1) between the stomatal and xylem area was related more to the hydraulic process, the selection pressure on stomata was lower than xylem of floating-leaved plants. Allometric relationships among the hydraulic traits on water transport of aquatic plants is the result of natural selection to achieve the maximum carbon gain, which is similar to terrestrial plants.

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