Abstract
Although the leaf-height-seed (LHS) scheme states that plant height and
leaf area are closely correlated with seed mass; phylogeny, genome size,
growth form, and leaf N may also explain variations in seed mass. Till
now, there has been little information on the relative contributions of
these factors. We compiled data consisting of 1071 plant species from
the literature to quantify the relationships between seed mass,
explanatory variables and phylogeny. Strong phylogenetic signals of
these explanatory variables reflected inherited ancestral traits of the
plant species. Without controlling phylogeny, growth form and leaf N are
associated with seed mass. However, this association disappeared when
accounting for phylogeny. Plant height, leaf area, and genome size
showed consistent positive relationship with seed mass irrespective of
phylogeny. Using partial R2s, phylogeny explained
50.89% of the variance in seed mass, much more than plant height, leaf
area, genome size, leaf N, and growth form explaining only 7.39%,
0.58%, 1.85%, 0.06% and 0.09%, respectively. Our study is the first
to disentangle the contributions of phylogeny and plant attributes to
the variance in seed mass, providing a novel avenue for better
understanding variation in traits across plant species.
Keywords: seed mass, plant height, leaf area, genome size, leaf
N, growth form, phylogeny