Fruits of Solanum plants, a group in the nightshade family, are incredibly diverse, ranging from sizable red tomatoes and purple eggplants to the poisonous green berries on potato plants.
Fruits of Solanum plants, a group in the nightshade family, are incredibly diverse, ranging from sizable red tomatoes and purple eggplants to the poisonous green berries on potato plants. A new and improved family tree of this group, produced by an international team led by researchers at Penn State, helps explain the striking diversity of fruit colors and sizes and how they might have evolved.
The team found that the size and color of fruits evolved together and that fruit-eating animals were like not the primary drivers of the fruits’ evolution, as had been previously thought. The study, published in the journal New Phytologist, may also provide insight into breeding agriculturally important plants with more desirable traits, the researchers said.
“There are about 1,300 species in the genus Solanum, making it one of the most diverse plant genera in the world,” said João Vitor Messeder, graduate student in ecology and biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science and Huck Institutes for the Life Sciences and lead author of the paper. “Since the 1970s and ‘80s, researchers have suggested that birds, bats and other fruit-eating animals have driven the evolution of fruits like those in Solanum. However, the importance of the evolutionary history of the plants has been underestimated or rarely considered when evaluating the diversification of fleshy fruits. To better test this hypothesis, we needed first to produce a more robust phylogeny, or family tree, of this plant group to improve our understanding of the relationships between species.”
Read more at: Penn State University
A new family tree of the plant genus Solanum, created by Penn State biologists, helps explain the striking diversity of their fruit color and size. (Photo Credit: João Vitor Messeder / Penn State)
