SynthesisProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Prevalence of monogamy at the level of flowers in plants.
Synthesis in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- The richness, frequency and relatedness components of mate diversity and mate portfolios.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Reply to Uma Shaanker: Pollen aggregations, genomic conflict, and single paternity in multiseeded fruits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Sampling bias inflates claims of floral monogamy: A reassessment of Bawa et al. (2025).Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Different types of genomic conflicts are possible in plants with multiovulate ovaries that produce multiseeded fruits: between the maternal plant and its offspring, among developing seeds, between paternal and maternal genomes over seed development, and among paternal parents if different parents sire seeds within an ovary. We tested the hypothesis that such conflicts in multiseeded fruits can be reduced if seeds are sired by a single pollen parent. We conducted a meta-analysis of paternity in 63 species across diverse plant families to assess paternity within fruits. Our results reveal that almost 50% of flowering plant species with multiseeded fruits have a single pollen parent. Our results question the prevailing notion that multiple paternity of seeds within fruits is widespread, especially when, in addition to single paternity in multiseeded fruits, a large number of species have single-seeded fruits. We provide insights into the role of sibling rivalry and kin selection in driving genetic relatedness of seeds within fruits. Equally important, the observation of monogamy at the level of flowers is in line with the mating patterns observed in animals.
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