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SHORT COMMUNICATION Cordia gerascanthus (Boraginaceae) produces stem domatia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2004

Chadwick V. Tillberg
Chadwick V. Tillberg
Affiliation:
Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 80309, USA
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Abstract

The production of domatia is a crucial step in the evolution of myrmecophytism (Fiala – Maschwitz 1992). Current models for the evolution of domatia predict that the ancestral state is one in which domatia production occurs later in a plant's ontogeny, while more derived ant-plants produce precocial domatia (Brouat – McKey 2000). I report that the neotropical tree Cordia gerascanthus L. represents a case of the former, in which domatia appear in mature trees. Through field and herbarium investigations, I have discovered that some C. gerascanthus individuals produce swollen, hollow, stem cavities that are ant-inhabited, while other C. gerascanthus individuals produce only solid stems. I suggest that C. gerascanthus, a species that produces domatia later in ontogeny, is an ideal system in which to investigate the basis of domatia evolution.

Keywords

ant-plant relationshipCordia gerascanthusdomatiatropical dry forest
Type
Brief Report
Information
Journal of Tropical Ecology , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 2004 , pp. 355 - 357
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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