Despite most angiosperms being perennial, once-flowering annuals have evolved multiple
times independently, making life history traits among the most labile trait syndromes in …

Endoreplication—a process that is common in plants and also accompanies changes in the
development of animal organisms—has been seen from a new perspective in recent years …

Recent evidence has questioned whether the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient (LDG), whereby
species richness increases towards the Equator, results in higher rates of speciation in the …

Several theories predict that rates of phenotypic evolution should be related to the rate at
which new lineages arise. However, drawing general conclusions regarding the coupling …

Rates of species formation vary widely across the tree of life and contribute to massive
disparities in species richness among clades. This variation can emerge from differences in …

Estimating time-dependent rates of speciation and extinction from dated phylogenetic trees
of extant species (timetrees), and determining how and why they vary, is key to …

The causes of the rapid diversification and extraordinary richness of flowering plants
(angiosperms) relative to other plant clades is a long-standing mystery. Angiosperms are …

Understanding the origins of diversity and the factors that drive some clades to be more
diverse than others are important issues in evolutionary biology. Sophisticated SSE (state …

Many organisms encapsulate their embryos in hard, protective shells. While birds and
reptiles largely rely on mineralized shells, plants often develop highly robust lignocellulosic …

In angiosperms, genome size and nucleobase composition (GC content) exhibit pronounced
variation with possible adaptive consequences. The hyperdiverse orchid family possessing …