9403252 Ackerly Other functional and comparative studies have dealt with intra- and interspecific variation of various plant characters, but use of phylogeny reconstruction to investigate evolution and coadaptation among aspects of canopy design is novel. Four components comprise this project: a) using material from living collections (botanical gardens), a DNA - based phylogeny will be generated for 30 to 40 North American and Asian species of maple (Acer, of which there are more than a hundred species altogether), b) a broad survey of interspecific variation in canopy architecture will be conducted, c) intraspecific variation in populations of six eastern North American species are to be studied, and d) methods of phylogenetic comparative analysis will be applied to test for correlated evolutionary change among suites of leaf and canopy architectural traits. %%% The adaptive significance of tree canopy architecture is a long - standing problem in plant ecology. Adoption of a systematics methodology to the question is innovative, unique, and one that certainly holds significant promise for environmental biology. The incorporation of a molecular evolution aspect in the work also bolsters it. In addition to benefits to fundamental scientific knowledge, potential spin - offs would include the possibility that plant architecture attributes could be genetically altered in the future, for horticultural / ornamental or other purposes. ***
