Delving into the loss of heterostyly in Rubiaceae: Is there a similar trend in tropical and non-tropical climate zones?

Heterostyly is a specialised floral polymorphism consisting in the presence within the populations of two or three morphs that differ reciprocally in sexual organ position. The function of heterostyly has usually been related to the promotion of cross-pollination fostered by the perfect adjustment between pollinators and flower morphologies. Rubiaceae is the largest family in which this polymorphism is present. Nevertheless, just a few studies on the evolution of heterostyly have been carried out in this family.To investigate the appearance and maintenance of heterostyly we select the subfamily Rubioideae as study group. Rubioideae occur in both tropical and temperate regions and since the tropics are known to contain higher biodiversity and greater ecological specialisation than temperate areas, we characterise the taxa as tropical, non-tropical or mixed distributed (when they are present in tropical and non-tropical areas) and explored whether the heterostyly, as a specialised system, is more stable in tropical regions than in other climates of the world.Ancestral nodes in Rubioideae present heterostyly, which also is maintained along most evolutionary lineages of this group. Although we do not find a significant correlation between the presence of heterostyly and the climate zones along the whole subfamily, our results show that two of the main clades in the Spermacoceae alliance where heterostyly is lost are distributed in non-tropical areas or, at least, they are not restricted to tropical distributions.These results partially support the hypothesis that plant lineages when exposed to different pollination scenarios may evolve towards divergent pollination systems and different degrees of specialisation. However, a more detailed analysis at the species level is suggested for future studies.