The pattern of natural variability of palynomorphological features with the example of some <i>Nierembergia</i> and <i>Bouchetia</i> species (Solanaceae) and natural system of bio-variety

Abstract

On the example of pollen morphological features of 8 species of Nierembergia and 2 species of Bouchetia (family Solanaceae), the properties of individual variability are described. Most of the studied characters (structure of apertures, ultrastructure of the sporoderm, surface sculpture, dimensions) do not have significant differences at the individual and intraspecific levels; taxonomically significant variability of morphological features of pollen is manifested at the level of the genus and suprageneric groups. The genera differ significantly in the sculpture of the pollen grain surface – striate in Nierembergia and tuberculate in Bouchetia. Pollen contained in one bud, anther or tetrad (fully completed gametophytic generation, where there is no death – all descendants of one ancestor without exception), is considered as an extreme model (maximum completeness with minimum complexity) to study the properties of natural morphological variability and the causes of its occurrence. It was found that pollen characters (sculpture, number and location of apertures) have the same pattern of variability (continuous and transitively ordered series), which embodied at different taxonomic levels in different characters. The natural variability of pollen morphological features is ordered not into a genealogical clade, but into a cline – continuous, geometrically ordered and transitive series (taxon-nonspecific and rank-independent). In this system of parallelisms, homological series are inseparable from non-homological ones, and typical forms, from deviations. The origin of typical and deviant forms cannot be explained separately (typical – genealogically, and deviant – as parallelism, convergence, chance or regularity). The individual variability of pollen forms is geometrically ordered and is not the result of random disturbances, failures of the hereditary program, or pathology. The typical form turns out to be a harmonious part of a geometrically ordered series of pure forms, free from functional and historical connotations. The similarity of pollen forms in these series is determined by their geometry and does not depend on affinity, homology, functionality (improvement, exercise, adaptation). The natural system of pollen forms is formed not by the structure of supposed affinity of supposed taxa (universalia, general concepts, the result of speculation that requires confirmation and admits refutation), but the structure of the observed parallelisms of the variability of individual living bodies. Evolutionary novelty (the current state, the observed variability) arises initially ordered in a pre-established form.