A research paper entitled “Why do stigmas move in a flexistylous plant?” was featured on the cover of Journal of Evolutionary Biology (JEB). This is the first time that JEB has publised research papers of Chinese scientists as the cover story since its inaugural issue in 1988.

JEB cover photo: March 2011

Flexistyly is a recently documented stylar polymorphism involving both spatial and temporal segregation of sex roles within hermaphroditic flowers.Using the experimental manipulation of stigma movement in self-compatible Alpinia mutica, Dr. Sun Shan, a postdoc of XTBG, with his teachers Prof. Zhang Dayong and Prof. Li Qingjun, tested the hypothesis that selection for reducing interference between male and female function drives the evolution and/or maintenance of stigma movement.

 The researchers found that manipulated flowers sired a significantly smaller proportion of seeds, showing that stigma movement in unmanipulated plants increased male fitness.

The research was supported by the Fund for Top One Hundred Young Scientists of Chinese Academy of Sciences to Q.-J.L., and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30225007 to Q.-J.L. and 30430160 to D.-Y.Z.)

S. SUN, D.-Y. ZHANG, A. R. IVES, Q.-J. LI, “Why do stigmas move in a flexistylous plant?”, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Vol 24, Issue 3, pp. 497-504, 2011.