Phenotypic plasticity guides Moricandia arvensis divergence and convergence across the Brassicaceae floral morphospace Gómez, José María González Megías, Adela Narbona, Eduardo Navarro, Luis Perfectti Álvarez, Francisco Armas, Cristina Brassicaceae Floral morphospace Moricandia Phenotypic convergence Phenotypic divergence Phenotypic plasticity Pollination niches Authors thank Raquel Sánchez, Angel Caravantes, Isabel Sánchez Almazo, María José Jorquera, and Iván Rodríguez Arós for helping us during several phases of the study. We also thank all contributors to the pollinator database (Table  S1 ) for kindly sending us unpublished information on Brassicaceae floral visitors. This research is supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (CGL2015‐63827‐P, CGL2017‐86626‐C2‐1‐P, CGL2017‐86626‐C2‐2‐P, UNGR15‐CE‐3315), Junta de Andalucía (P18‐FR‐3641, IE19_238 EEZA CSIC), LIFE18 GIE/IT/000755, and Xunta de Galicia (CITACA), including EU FEDER funds. This is a contribution to the Research Unit Modeling Nature, funded by the Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento, Empresas y Universidad, and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), reference SOMM17/6109/UGR. Many flowers exhibit phenotypic plasticity. By inducing the production of several phenotypes, plasticity may favour the rapid exploration of different regions of the floral morphospace. We investigated how plasticity drives Moricandia arvensis, a species displaying within-individual floral polyphenism, across the floral morphospace of the entire Brassicaceae family. We compiled the multidimensional floral phenotype, the phylogenetic relationships, and the pollination niche of over 3000 species to construct a family-wide floral morphospace. We assessed the disparity between the two M. arvensis floral morphs (as the distance between the phenotypic spaces occupied by each morph) and compared it with the family-wide disparity. We measured floral divergence by comparing disparity with the most common ancestor, and estimated the convergence of each floral morph with other species belonging to the same pollination niches. Moricandia arvensis exhibits a plasticity-mediated floral disparity greater than that found between species, genera and tribes. The novel phenotype of M. arvensis moves outside the region occupied by its ancestors and relatives, crosses into a new region where it encounters a different pollination niche, and converges with distant Brassicaceae lineages. Our study suggests that phenotypic plasticity favours floral divergence and rapid appearance of convergent flowers, a process which facilitates the evolution of generalist pollination systems. 2021-12-09T12:44:59Z 2021-12-09T12:44:59Z 2021-10-17 journal article Gómez, J. M., González‐Megías, A., Narbona, E., Navarro, L., Perfectti, F., & Armas, C. (2021). Phenotypic plasticity guides Moricandia arvensis divergence and convergence across the Brassicaceae floral morphospace. New Phytologist. [https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.17807] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/71951 10.1111/nph.17807 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ open access Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España John Wiley and Sons Inc