Adaptation of Flower Form: An Evo‐Devo Approach to Study Adaptive Evolution in Flower Morphology

This chapter discusses the genetic basis of adaptation of flower form. Transcriptome data from flowers representing diverse morphological innovations can be used to develop an understanding of how specific phenotypes correlate with differential gene expression, and such genomic-level data are becoming an important tool to study the relationship between genotype and phenotype in non-model species. These data enable researchers to infer gene regulatory networks (GRN) and the changes therein that underlie the differential developmental processes giving rise to diverse morphologies. The chapter highlights some of the challenges that evo-devo researchers face in identifying adaptive changes in the evolution of floral form. It describes the potential role of SEPALLATA 3 (SEP3) molecular evolution in flower morphological diversification and angiosperm adaptative evolution in the context of the floral organ specification GRN (FOS-GRN) and demonstrates how using a gene Q2 regulatory network approach can provide insight into the adaptive nature of developmental evolution.