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Título del libro: Acacia: Characteristics, Distribution And Uses
Título del capítulo: Reconstruction of ancestral character states in neotropical ant-acacias

Autores UNAM:
SANDRA LUZ GOMEZ ACEVEDO;
Autores externos:

Idioma:

Año de publicación:
2018
Resumen:

The footprints left by evolution in the distribution of characters among current organisms have been one of the main tools in the study of organic evolution. The reconstruction of ancestral character states offers the possibility of knowing the changes suffered by characters in a species throughout evolutionary time; of understanding the origin of the adaptations to which they give rise, and comprehending their function as well as recognizing the way in which the symbiotic interactions that they sustain with other species influence such attributes. The relationships between plants and ants provide numerous examples of mutualism, one of them is the obligate and highly specialized interaction between ants and Acacias. Neotropical ant-Acacias are characterized by the presence of extrafloral nectaries, domatia and beltian bodies; traits directly related to their mutualistic association with ants. These traits when analyzed under the perspective of the reconstruction of ancestral character states show that during the transition from the external group to the myrmecophile group the amount of extrafloral nectaries per petiole increased and their shape changed from circular to columnar and canoe-shaped. The stipules grew in length resulting in domatia and cyanogenic glycosides against herbivory were lost. Furthermore, in relation to other morphological characteristics, the leaves were lengthened in a first step and then became smaller. The number of pinnae pairs and pinnules per leaf decreased, while both the length and width of the pinnules increased, as well as the petiole maximum length. Thus, the selection pressure that symbiotic relationships exert on interacting species is reflected in a systematic set of their attributes, which, in our case, were developed in an environmental scenario of warm-humid conditions prevalent in the Neotropics during the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene. © 2018 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.


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