2014/12/12 by Liyuan Yang, Carlos A. Machado, Xiaodong Dang +4 · 1 citation
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Environmental Science · #Plant and animal studies #Plant Parasitism and Resistance #Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies #Biology #Dioecy #Plant reproductive morphology #Ficus #Biological dispersal #Pollination #Mutualism (biology) #Pollinator #Ecology #Population #Botany #Pollen #Demography
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/evo.12584
openalex publication_date 2014/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Differences in breeding system are associated with correlated ecological and morphological changes in plants. In Ficus, dioecy and monoecy are strongly associated with different suites of traits (tree height, population density, fruiting frequency, pollinator dispersal ecology). Although approximately 30% of fig species are pollinated by multiple species of fig-pollinating wasps, it has been suggested that copollinators are rare in dioecious figs. Here, we test whether there is a connection between the fig breeding system and copollinator incidence and diversification by conducting a meta-analysis of molecular data from pollinators of 119 fig species that includes new data from 15 Asian fig species. We find that the incidence of copollinators is not significantly different between monoecious and dioecious Ficus. Surprisingly, while all copollinators in dioecious figs are sister taxa, only 32.1% in monoecious figs are sister taxa. We present hypotheses to explain those patterns and discuss their consequences on the evolution of this mutualism.