Geographical distribution: ploidy state ranges
We observed that polyploid macrophyte species occupy larger geographical
ranges than haploid/diploid species at global scale (Fig. 6). Overall,
mixed ploidy had the biggest geographical range size (p<0.001) on a gridcell basis, followed by polyploids and then
haploid/diploid species, which also differ from each other significantly
(p <0.05). Regarding the species latitudinal range for
the subset of 256 species of 11 aquatic plant families used in this
analysis, mixed ploidy plants again showed significantly greater
latitudinal range, as well as higher maximum and mean latitudes of
occurrence than either haploid/diploid or polyploid species (p<0.001) (Fig. 6). Latitudinal range diagrams are shown in
Appendix A5 for families with >5 species per ploidy
category which have available ploidy state information per ploidy
category, in each of 11 macrophyte families for which latitudinal range
data were also available (see Murphy et al., 2020).