Offspring polymorphism is a reproductive strategy where individual organisms simultaneously produce offspring that differ in morphology and ecology. It occurs across the Tree of Life but is particularly common among plants, where it is termed seed (diaspore) heteromorphism. The prevalence of this strategy in unpredictably varying environments has resulted in the assumption that it serves as a bet‐hedging mechanism. We found 101 examples of this strategy in southwestern North America. We provide phylogenetically informed evidence for the hypothesis that the occurrence of seed heteromorphism increases with increasing environmental variability, though this pattern was only significant for aridity, one of our two rainfall variability metrics. We provide a strong test of bet hedging for a large, taxonomically diverse set of seed heteromorphic species, lending support to the hypothesis that bet hedging is an important mechanistic driver for the evolution of seed heteromorphism.

中文翻译：

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后代多态性和投注对冲：大规模的系统发育分析。

后代多态性是一种繁殖策略，单个生物体同时产生形态和生态均不同的后代。它发生在生命之树上，但在植物中尤为常见，在这种情况下，它被称为种子（diaspore）异质性。这种策略在不可预测的变化环境中的普遍性导致人们假设它充当了一种对冲机制。我们在北美西南部发现了101个这种策略的例子。我们为以下假设提供系统发育的证据，即种子异质性的发生会随着环境变异性的增加而增加，尽管这种模式仅对干旱具有重要意义，干旱是我们两个降雨变异性指标之一。对于大量不同分类的种子异形物种，我们提供了强大的下注对冲测试，