Sentence:  Because nuclear genome size of may affect several phenotypic and developmental characteristics irrespective of the information coded in the DNA (i.e., the <WSD>nucleotypic</WSD> effect; [71 ]), we speculate that the variation we found in nuclear genome size represents adaptation to different environmental conditions. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Describing any effect due solely to the size of an organism's (nuclear) genome