Self-funded PhD: Form, function, and phylogeny: modelling the evolution of carpel and fruit shape across angiosperms

About the Project

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different fruits and fruit shapes? This PhD project explores the origin this diversity from the perspective of the carpel, the unique plant structure that gives rise to fruits and seeds. Using a combination of morphometrics, evolutionary modelling, and phylogenetic methods, you will investigate how carpel and fruit shape has diversified over time.

The carpel is the fundamental reproductive unit of flowering plants. It encloses the ovules, facilitates their fertilization and later develops into the fruit, aiding seed dispersal. The remarkable diversity of fruit shape is underpinned by a range of carpel forms which in turn reflect both functional adaptations and a complex evolutionary history. Across three interconnected aims you will analyse key traits of carpel diversity across angiosperm lineages, identify major trends and innovations in carpel evolution, and reconstruct the ancestral carpel form to illuminate the origins of fruit diversity.

To quantify carpel diversity and understand the evolutionary processes shaping it, you will assemble a large dataset of morphological and functional traits from a sample of species representing all major angiosperm groups. You will collect data from the literature and your own observations and apply multivariate statistical analysis to the resulting trait matrix to infer patterns of morphological disparity (similarities and differences) between and within groups of flowering plants, and test how certain traits are related to each other and to function.

In parallel, you will model the phylogenetic relationships among sampled species and construct a phylomorphospace, integrating morphological data with evolutionary history. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, you will identify evolutionary shifts and innovations in carpel morphology. Evolutionary modelling will then be applied to reconstruct carpel traits at key angiosperm nodes, revealing broad trends in carpel diversification.

Finally, you will use geometric morphometrics to mathematically describe carpel shape in selected flowering plant species. Drawing on insights from previous analyses you will assess which aspects of shape are most relevant from a functional and evolutionary perspective and combine 2D and 3D approaches to capture carpel shape and reconstruct the ancestral morphology that gave rise to all the present diversity.

Supported by an interdisciplinary team of plant biologists, evolutionary biologists and palaeobiologists from the University of Bristol and the University of Bath you will develop skills in evolutionary modelling, comparative phylogenetics, and geometric morphometrics, and help uncover the drivers of morphological diversity in one of the most ecologically and economically important plant groups.