The astounding variety of angiosperm flower morphologies has evolved in response to many selective forces. Flower development is highly coordinated and involves developmental associations between size and shape, ontogenetic allometry, which in turn affect the morphology of mature flowers. Although ontogenetic allometries can act as a developmental constraint and may influence adaptive evolution, allometries can evolve themselves and may change rapidly in response to selection. We explored the evolution of ontogenetic allometry in the flowers of 11 species of Loasoideae. Seven species belong to Caiophora, which radiated recently in the central Andes, and contains species that are pollinated by bees, hummingbirds, and small rodents. According to a previous study, the diversification of Caiophora involved departures from simple allometric scaling, but the changes to allometry that enabled flower diversification have not been explored yet. We characterized the ontogenetic allometry of each species with the methods of geometric morphometrics. We studied the evolution of allometries by constructing allometric spaces, in which the allometry of each species is represented by a point and the arrangement of points indicates the relations among allometric trajectories. To examine the history of changes of ontogenetic allometries, we projected the phylogeny into the allometric spaces. Inspection of allometric spaces suggests that ontogenetic variation is limited to a few dominant features. The allometries of the two main functional flower parts under study differ in their evolutionary labilities, and patterns of variation reflect pollination systems, differences in structural organization, and abiotic environmental factors.

中文翻译：

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安第斯山脉凯奥弗拉属（茄科，亚科。茄科）中花个体发育异种异体的演变。

被子植物花形的惊人变化是对许多选择力的反应。花的发育高度协调，并涉及大小和形状之间的发育联系，以及个体发育的异形，这反过来又影响了成熟花的形态。尽管个体遗传学的同种异体可以作为发展的制约因素，并可能影响适应性进化，但同种异体的自身可以进化并可以响应选择而迅速变化。我们探索了茄科11种花的个体发育异体异体的进化。七种属于凯奥菲拉（Caiophora），最近在安第斯山脉中部辐射，并包含被蜜蜂，蜂鸟和小型啮齿动物授粉的物种。根据先前的研究，Caiophora的多元化涉及从简单的异速生长缩放比例出发，但是尚未探索使花卉多样化的异速变化。我们用几何形态计量学的方法表征了每个物种的个体发育异体异体。我们通过构建异形空间研究异形的演化，其中每个物种的异形由一个点表示，点的排列指示异形轨迹之间的关系。为了检查个体发生异形体变化的历史，我们将系统发育预测到异形体空间中。对异形空间的检查表明，个体发育变异仅限于一些主要特征。研究中的两个主要功能花部分的同素异形体在进化能力上各不相同，