Phylogenetic and ecological correlates of pollen morphological diversity in a neotropical rainforest

Morphology varies enormously across clades, and the morphology of
a trait may reflect ecological function or the retention of ancestral
features. We examine the tension between ecological and phylogenetic
correlates of morphological diversity through a case study of pollen grains
produced by angiosperms in Barro Colorado Island, Panama (BCI). Using a
molecular phylogeny of 730 taxa we demonstrate a statistically significant
association between morphological and genetic distance for these plants.
However, the relationship is non-linear, and while close relatives share
more morphological features than distant relatives, above a genetic
distance of ~0.7 increasingly distant relatives are not more divergent in
phenotype. The pollen grains of biotically pollinated and abiotically
pollinated plants overlap in morphological space, but certain pollen
morphotypes and individual morphological traits are unique to these
pollination ecologies. Our data show that the pollen grains of biotically
pollinated plants are significantly more morphologically diverse than those
of abiotically pollinated plants.
Methods
This dataset has been collected from published literature, with each reference cited in the manuscript. The data has been processed using a Python3 script, which has been uploaded here.