The origin and morphological character evolution of the paleotropical woody bamboos

The woody bamboos (Bambusoideae) exhibit distinctive biological traits within Poaceae, such as highly lignified culms, rapid shoot growth, monocarpic mass flowering and nutlike or fleshy caryopses. Much of the remarkable morphological diversity across the subfamily exists within a single hexaploid clade, the paleotropical woody bamboos (PWB), making it ideal to investigate the factors underlying morphological evolution in woody bamboos. However, the origin and biogeographical history of PWB remain elusive, as does the effect of environmental factors on the evolution of their morphological characters. We generated a robust and time-calibrated phylogeny of PWB using single nucleotide polymorphisms retrieved from optimized double digest restriction site associated DNA sequencing, and explored the evolutionary trends of habit, inflorescence, and caryopsis type in relation to environmental factors including climate, soil, and topography. We inferred that the PWB started to diversify across the Oligocene–Miocene boundary and formed four major clades, that is, Melocanninae, Racemobambosinae s.l. (comprising Dinochloinae, Greslanlinae, Racemobambosinae s.str. and Temburongiinae), Hickeliinae and Bambusinae s.l. (comprising Bambusinae s.str. plus Holttumochloinae). The ancestor of PWB was reconstructed as having erect habit, indeterminate inflorescence and basic caryopsis. The characters including climbing/scrambling habit, determinate inflorescence, and nucoid/bacoid caryopsis have since undergone multiple changes and reversals during the diversification of PWB. The evolution of all three traits was correlated with, and hence likely influenced by, aspects of climate, topography, and soil, with climate factors most strongly correlated with morphological traits, and soil factors least so. However, topography had more influence than climate or soil on the evolution of erect habit, whereas both factors had greater effect on the evolution of bacoid caryopsis than did soil. Our results provide novel insights into morphological diversity and adaptive evolution in bamboos for future ecological and evolutionary research.