Pk. Diggle, ARCHITECTURAL EFFECTS AND THE INTERPRETATION OF PATTERNS OF FRUIT ANDSEED DEVELOPMENT, Annual review of ecology and systematics, 26, 1995, pp. 531-552
The commonly observed proximal-to-distal decrease within inflorescence
s of fruit and/or seed maturation per flower has frequently been attri
buted to competition among developing fruits for resources. The resear
ch summarized in this review suggests, however, that the observed vari
ation can also be due to architecture-that is, to sources of variation
inherent in plant axes. Thus, the fate of a developing flower depends
not only on the reproductive events that have preceded it during the
ontogeny of the organism, but on where it occurs within the architectu
re of an individual. The effects of architecture are separable experim
entally from the effects of differential resource allocation, and care
ful experimental analysis of these two factors will enhance our unders
tanding of the physiological, developmental, and evolutionary controls
of fruit and seed production in flowering plants.