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).