The Pattern of Natural Variability of Palynomorphological Features by the Example of Some Nierembergia and Bouchetia Species (Solanaceae) and Natural System of Biovariety

By the example of morphological features of pollen of eight species of Nierembergia and two species of Bouchetia (Solanaceae family), the properties of individual variability are described. Most of the studied characters (structure of apertures, ultrastructure of the sporoderm, surface sculpture, and dimensions) do not have significant differences at the individual and intraspecific levels; taxonomically significant variability of morphological features of pollen is manifested at the level of the genus and suprageneric groups. The genera differ significantly in the sculpture of the pollen grain surface—striate in Nierembergia and tuberculate in Bouchetia. Pollen contained in one bud, anther, or tetrad (fully completed gametophytic generation, where there is no death and all without exception descendants of one ancestor are alive), is considered as an extreme model (maximum completeness with minimum complexity) to study the properties of natural morphological variability and the causes of its occurrence. It was found that pollen characters (sculpture, number and location of apertures) have the same pattern of variability (continuous and transitively ordered series), which is embodied at different taxonomic levels in different characters. The natural variability of morphological features of pollen is ordered not into a genealogical clade, but into a cline—continuous, geometrically ordered and transitive series (taxon-nonspecific and rank-independent). In this system of parallelisms, homologous series are inseparable from nonhomologous ones, and typical forms are inseparable from deviations. The origin of typical and deviant forms cannot be explained separately (typical—genealogically, and deviant—as parallelism, convergence, chance or regularity). The individual variability of pollen forms is geometrically ordered and is not the result of random disturbances, failures of the hereditary program, or pathology. The typical form turns out to be a harmonious part of a geometrically ordered series of pure forms, free from functional and historical connotations. The similarity of pollen forms in these series is determined by their geometry and does not depend on affinity, homology, or functionality. The natural system of pollen forms is due not to the structure of supposed affinity of supposed taxa, but the structure of the observed parallelisms of the variability of individual living bodies. Evolutionary novelty (the current state, the observed variability) arises initially ordered in a preestablished form.