Evolutionary history shapes fruit volume while climate modulates its strength

Why do some plants produce tiny, dry fruits while others invest in large, fleshy ones? Fruit volume plays a key role in seed dispersal, survival, and the establishment of new plants, yet its large-scale drivers remain poorly understood.

In a study published in Plant Diversity, a team of researchers from China analyzed 2,668 angiosperm species from 22 ecological stations across China, covering forests, grasslands, wetlands, and deserts. By combining evolutionary relationships, plant traits, and climate data, they examined what determines variation in fruit volume across species.

"We found that closely related species tend to produce similar-sized fruits, indicating a strong influence of evolutionary history," shares corresponding author Bo Wang. "Across all species, evolutionary relationships explained the largest share of explained variation in fruit volume (64.71%), making them the dominant factor shaping this trait."

However, this influence varies across environments. The contribution of evolutionary history declines with increasing temperature—particularly the maximum temperature of the warmest month. 

"This pattern indicates that climate modulates the strength of phylogenetic constraints rather than overriding them entirely,” explains Wang. “In other words, evolutionary history sets the baseline for fruit volume, while environmental conditions influence how closely species follow that baseline through environmental filtering and species turnover during community assembly."

The response also differs among plant groups. Dry-fruited species show a clearer decline in the influence of evolutionary history under warmer conditions, whereas fleshy-fruited species exhibit a contrasting pattern—tend to retain or even strengthening phylogenetic constraints in warmer regions. This suggests that different ecological strategies may shape how plant traits respond to environmental gradients.

"Evolutionary history plays a central role in shaping fruit volume, but its influence is not fixed," adds Wang. "Our results show that climate can change how strongly this evolutionary pattern is expressed across environments."

The study provides new insight into how plant traits are shaped by both long-term evolutionary history and present-day environmental conditions. Understanding this balance will help better predict how plant communities may respond to ongoing environmental change.

Contact author:

Bo Wang, yangblue@ahu.edu.cn

Funder:  

This study was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (32171533, 31971444 and 32560127), Anhui Provincial Natural Science Foundation (2208085J28).

Conflict of interest: 

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

See the article:

Yingqun Feng, Jiming Cheng, Chao Zhang, Yujiao Ma, Bo Wang, Climate modulation of phylogenetic and functional constraints on fruit volume: A case study of Chinese angiosperms, Plant Diversity, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pld.2026.03.010