bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/462663; this version posted November 5, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Effects of genome size on pollen performance 2 3 4 5 6 How does genome size affect the evolution of pollen tube growth rate, a haploid 7 performance trait? 8 9 10 11 12 John B. Reese1,2 and Joseph H. Williams1 13 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 14 37996, U.S.A. 15 16 17 18 1Author for correspondence: 19 John B. Reese 20 Tel: 865 974 9371 21 Email:
[email protected] 22 23 24 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/462663; this version posted November 5, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 25 ABSTRACT 26 Premise of the Study - Male gametophytes of seed plants deliver sperm to eggs via a pollen 27 tube. Pollen tube growth rate (PTGR) may evolve rapidly due to pollen competition and haploid 28 selection, but many angiosperms are currently polyploid and all have polyploid histories. 29 Polyploidy should initially accelerate PTGR via “genotypic effects” of increased gene dosage 30 and heterozygosity on metabolic rates, but “nucleotypic effects” of genome size on cell size 31 should reduce PTGR.