ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Systematics and Evolution
Phylogenetic signal in flowering phenology weakens over elevation in the high Andes of Chile: evidence for evolutionary convergence in a harsh habitat
Provisionally accepted
Ítalo Tamburrino1,2,3*
Valeria Robles1
Paola Jara-Arancio1,3,4
Pablo C. Guerrero1,3,5
Jesús López Angulo6Jeannine Cavender-Bares7
Mary T. K. Arroyo1,2,3- 1Cape Horn International Center, Puerto Williams, Chile
- 2Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
- 3Universidad de Chile Instituto de Ecologia y Biodiversidad, Ñuñoa, Chile
- 4Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile
- 5Universidad de Concepcion, Concepción, Chile
- 6Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Móstoles, Spain
- 7University of Minnesota Twin Cities Department of Ecology Evolution and Behavior, Saint Paul, United States
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This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article High elevation plants face cold temperatures and short growing seasons that together constrain their window for flowering. These environmental limitations are expected to promote strong overlap in flowering phenology among co-occurring species. Whether similarity in flowering times arises from environmental filtering of lineages preadapted to cold conditions or from evolutionary convergence in response to shared selective pressures remains unclear. We hypothesize that the flowering phenology of high alpine communities is the result of convergence due to strong selective pressure imposed by the environment rather than environmental filtering for conserved ancestral traits. To test this hypothesis, functional and phylogenetic structure and phylogenetic signal, estimated from phenological traits and a molecular phylogeny, were compared against patterns expected under a null model across four sites spanning subalpine to high alpine zones in the central Chilean Andes, encompassing a total of 86 species. High alpine sites showed faster flowering following snowmelt, showed a higher level of functional convergence in phenological traits and significant phylogenetic signal for a smaller number of floral traits than the subalpine sites. The two high alpine communities showed significant terminal phylogenetic clustering. Our results suggest that environmental filtering of preadapted lineages plays a minor role in shaping high alpine community structure. Rather, intense environmental pressures at higher elevations drive trait convergence. We conclude that the general trend for phylogenetic conservatism in floral phenology has been overridden by the harsh environmental conditions in the high Andes. The high alpine environment can be seen as an evolutionary promoter rather than a gatekeeper of lineages preadapted to cold conditions.
Keywords: Alpine plants, Andes, elevation gradient, Flowering phenology, functional diversity, Phylogenetic signal, phylogenetic structure
Received: 03 Nov 2025; Accepted: 29 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Tamburrino, Robles, Jara-Arancio, Guerrero, López Angulo, Cavender-Bares and Arroyo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ítalo Tamburrino
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