Format: ORAL

Julianne Phipps 1,2, Elliot Gardner 3,4, Nyree Zerega 1,2

1 Northwestern University, Evanston, USA 2 Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, USA 3 Florida International University, Miami, USA 4 Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA

Monoecy, the presence of discretely sexed flowers on the same individual, and dioecy, the presence of only unisexual individuals, are both relatively rare breeding systems among angiosperms1 but yet are the only breeding systems, with few exceptions, found among the roughly 1200 extant members of the Moraceae family. Dioecy, in particular, has long been considered as an evolutionary endpoint due in large part to the perceived reproductive hurdles such a breeding system presents in plants. But there is an increasing body of evidence that dioecy can and will revert to other breeding systems, demonstrating lineage extinction is not a foregone conclusion. With this increasingly accepted, exploration into the surrounding factors is merited. Using an updated molecular phylogeny, the evolutionary patterns of these breeding systems within Moraceae are contextualized through their relationships with character traits chosen either for their long association with dioecy or for their potential to contribute to resilience in the face of habitat disruption or periods of low reproductive success. Evaluating these factors in tandem will reveal key evolutionary milestones and adaptive connections which enabled Moraceae to diversify into the ecologically important family it is today. 1 Renner, S. S. 2014. The relative and absolute frequencies of angiosperm sexual systems: Dioecy, monoecy, gynodioecy, and an updated online database. American Journal of Botany 101:15881596.