Fig. 2

Abortion rates of viable reproductive units during sexual and aposporous development. Development starts from the megaspore phase (a), continues with gametophyte (b) and the embryo phase (c), and ends with the seedling phase. The major abortion (mean 52%) happens during the reduced female gametophyte (FG) phase (b) of the sexual development (blue dashed line). In comparison, the decline is less steep during the unreduced aposporous female gametophyte phase (solid gray line). These results suggest stronger selection upon the reduced phase (n) of the sexual development than upon the unreduced phase (2n) of the aposporous development. The decline from the embryo stage to the offspring (seedling) stage is in sexual and apomictic offspring almost the same, as germination rates are not significantly different. Proportions of reproductive units are given as means with confidence intervals. Data were adapted from [25, 26]