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Evolving towards semelparity in Andean Puya (Bromeliaceae): testing differential investment in reproductive displays. Co-authors Cody Williams and Kenneth J. Sytsma. Semelparity (syn. monocarpy), the life-history trait of senescing after a single, massive sexual reproduction episode, is relatively rare in long-lived angiosperms. Puya (Bromeliaceae), a large genus of long-lived, terrestrial Andean rosette plants, were found during fieldwork through the Andes to exhibit variability in life history type. The majority of species are iteroparous, producing vegetative daughter rosettes before producing terminal inflorescences. Several species, primarily from high elevations in the wetter northern Andes, often reproduce and die with no vegetative reproduction, and are a placed in a new category here called semi-semelparous. Only Puya raimondii, the largest bromeliad on earth from the high-elevation, drier central Andes, is always semelparous. Semelparous taxa in other giant rosette genera (Yucca, Agave, Lobelia ) have been shown to invest more energy in reproductive displays than close iteroparous relatives. To see if the semi-semelparous taxa are evolving towards true semelparity, photographs of the majority of Puya species in the field were converted into pixels and the ratio between the inflorescence and vegetative rosette area was calculated and compared between iteroparous, semi-semelparous and semelparous taxa. Permutations of these data (eg, exponentially scaled) were …

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