Molecular Ecology of Plant Sexual Reproduction

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Background

Sexual reproduction is the key for plant life history, and plant-pollinator relationships could represent one of the most important steps for plant sexual reproduction because more than 80% of angiosperms depend on animal pollinators for seed productions. Since the pioneering contribution of Charles Darwin on plant sexual reproduction, there are endless amazing advances in plant reproduction, including flower evolution, shifts of plant mating and sexual systems and their genetic consequences, plant-pollinator interactions at species and community levels. For example, floral traits are considered to be driven by adaptations to biotic agents, such as pollinators, florivores, nectar thieves and microbes, but recent studies suggest that abiotic agents, such as rain, UV radiation, water availability and soil nutrition could contribute to the selective pressure on the evolution of floral traits and shift of mating or sexual systems. All these new opinions or experimental supports could have updated our traditional understandings of plant sexual reproduction.

Presently, new methods and technologies have been employed in many fields of plant sexual reproduction. In life related sciences, the rapid advances of DNA sequencing in the past ten years have been stimulated researches on the evolutionary consequences of mating system shift, pollinator shift, and molecular mechanisms underlying floral evolution. Among changes of floral traits, anthocyanin-based changes of flower color have been explored extensively across multiple plant species, in which whole petal color or the contrasting patterns on petal are involved. The accuracy in detecting deleterious mutations by genome and/or transcriptome sequencing underlies mechanisms of inbreeding depression, which would be of great help in uncovering mechanisms involving the shift of the mating system, along with the changes of floral traits. No doubt next-generation sequencing would advance our knowledge on plant sexual reproduction.

In these contexts, this research topic would call for papers on the molecular ecology of plant sexual reproduction, with aims to discover mechanisms involving plant sexual reproduction using molecular tools. Contributions that focus on less explored areas of plant sexual reproduction are particularly encouraged.

1) Ecological and genetic consequences of mating system shift and floral trait change based on molecular markers or next-generation sequencing.

2) Plant-pollinator interactions with aids of molecular tools, including pollination networks on community level embedded with species phylogeny, pollinator mediated selection on flower traits based on species phylogeny or community phylogeny.

3) Floral evolution based on genome or transcriptome sequencing, with objectives to screen key genes associated with floral traits, e.g. color, scents, subtle traits.

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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