Evolution of developmental potential and the multiple independent origins of leaves in Paleozoic vascular plants

By C. Boyce, Andrew H. Knoll. Paleobiology, 2002

154 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Four vascular plant lineages, the ferns, sphenopsids, progymnosperms, and seed plants, evolved laminated leaves in the Paleozoic. A principal coordinate analysis of 641 leaf species from North American and European floras ranging in age from Middle Devonian through the end of the Permian shows that the clades followed parallel trajectories of evolution: each clade exhibits rapid radiation of leaf morphologies from simple (and similar) forms in the Late Devonian/Early Carboniferous to diverse, differentiated leaf forms, with strong constraint on further diversification beginning in the mid Carboniferous. Similar morphospace trajectories have been documented in studies of morphological evolution in animals; however, plant fossils present unique opportunities for understanding the developmental processes that underlie such patterns. Detailed comparison of venation in Paleozoic leaves with that of modern leaves for which developmental mechanisms are known suggests developmental interpretations for the origination and early evolution of leaves. The parallel evolution of a marginal meristem by the modification of developmental mechanisms available in the common ancestor of all groups resulted in the pattern of leaf evolution repeated by each clade. Early steps of leaf evolution were followed by constraint on further diversification as the possible elaborations of marginal growth were exhausted. Hypotheses of development in Paleozoic leaves can be tested by the study of living plants with analogous leaf morphologies.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aa8b54d0796f10b42271e16b589a772f3ba2245f

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Citations in the corpus

Estimating morphological diversity and tempo with discrete character‐taxon matrices: implementation, challenges, progress, and future directions (2016, methodology): “…commonly used by nonvertebrate workers, and was used explicitly by Hopkins & Smith (2015), and implicitly by many others (Foote, 1999; Lupia, 1999; Boyce & Knoll, 2002; Liow, 2004, 2006, 2007; Bapst et al., 2012; Kotric & Knoll, 2015a), albeit with the caveat that they were treating all…”
SCALE AND HIERARCHY IN MACROEVOLUTION (2007, background): “…Palaeozoic invertebrates (Foote 1997; Thomas et al. 2000; Valentine 2004; Conway Morris 2006), mid-Palaeozoic land plants (Bateman et al. 1998; Boyce and Knoll 2002; Boyce 2005) and vertebrates (Ahlberg et al. 2006; Ruta et al. 2006), early angiosperms (Lupia 1999), and even in Proterozoic…”
Angiosperms Helped Put the Rain in the Rainforests: The Impact of Plant Physiological Evolution on Tropical Biodiversity1 (2010, background): “…ferns, and horsetailrelated sphenophylls, although the number could be significantly higher given the possibility of separate origins in ophioglossoid, marattioid, and leptosporangiate ferns and in minor fossil groups of enigmatic affinities, like the Noeggerathiales (Boyce & Knoll, 2002).”
The Ancestral Developmental Tool Kit of Land Plants (2007, background): “From a paleobiological perspective, Boyce and Knoll (2002) point to a need for molecular analysis of leaf development to assist in understanding the evolution of leaves and their underlying developmental mechanisms.”
Ecology of Leaf Longevity (2011, background): “(Hirose et al. 1989) and grasses (Bowes 1997), as well as the gymnosperm Welwitschia, all have a different mode of leaf development in which basal meristems continuously form new leaf tissues.”
Towards a phylogenetic nomenclature of Tracheophyta (2007, background): “…as a synapomorphy of /Euphyllophyta (Schneider & al., 2002), but analyses that include fossils suggest that the compound, fernlike megaphylls of monilophytes and seed plants evolved independently (Stewart & Rothwell, 993; Kenrick & Crane, 997; Doyle, 998; Boyce & Knoll, 2002; Friedman & al., 2004).”