Alleles that introgress between species can influence the evolutionary and ecological fate of species exposed to novel environments. Hybrid offspring of different species are often unfit, and yet it ...has long been argued that introgression can be a potent force in evolution, especially in plants. Over the last two decades, genomic data have increasingly provided evidence that introgression is a critically important source of genetic variation and that this additional variation can be useful in adaptive evolution of both animals and plants. Here, we review factors that influence the probability that foreign genetic variants provide long-term benefits (so-called adaptive introgression) and discuss their potential benefits. We find that introgression plays an important role in adaptive evolution, particularly when a species is far from its fitness optimum, such as when they expand their range or are subject to changing environments.
It is increasingly realized that homoploid hybrid speciation (HHS), which involves no change in chromosome number, is an important mechanism of speciation. HHS will likely increase in frequency as ...ecological and geographical barriers between species are continuing to be disrupted by human activities. HHS requires the establishment of reproductive isolation between a hybrid and its parents, but the underlying genes and genetic mechanisms remain largely unknown. In this study, we reveal by integrated approaches that reproductive isolation originates in one homoploid hybrid plant species through the inheritance of alternate alleles at genes that determine parental premating isolation. The parent species of this hybrid species are reproductively isolated by differences in flowering time and survivorship on soils containing high concentrations of iron. We found that the hybrid species inherits alleles of parental isolating major genes related to flowering time from one parent and alleles of major genes related to iron tolerance from the other parent. In this way, it became reproductively isolated from one parent by the difference in flowering time and from the other by habitat adaptation (iron tolerance). These findings and further modeling results suggest that HHS may occur relatively easily via the inheritance of alternate parental premating isolating genes and barriers.
Using integrated approaches, the authors reveal that reproductive isolation originated in one homoploid hybrid plant species (Ostryopsis intermedia) through the inheritance of alternate alleles at genes that determine parental premating isolation (flowering time and habitat adaptation, i.e., iron tolerance). Their findings and further modeling results suggest that homoploid hybrid speciation can occur easily via the inheritance of alternate, pre-existing, parental reproductive isolations.
Highlights • The ability to produce unreduced gametes facilitates polyploid speciation. • Unreduced gamete production is under genetic control. • Stress and interspecific hybridisation increase ...unreduced gamete production. • Unreduced gamete production may comprise an evolutionary mechanism for speciation.
Summary
The Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) sensu lato (sl), comprising the platform, the Himalaya and the Hengduan Mountains, is characterized by a large number of endemic plant species. This ...evolutionary cradle may have arisen from explosive species diversification because of geographic isolation. However, gene flow has been widely detected during the speciation processes of all groups examined, suggesting that natural selection may have also played an important role during species divergence in this region. In addition, natural hybrids have been recovered in almost all species‐rich genera. This suggests that numerous species in this region are still ‘on the speciation pathway to complete reproductive isolation (RI)’. Such hybrids could directly develop into new species through hybrid polyploidization and homoploid hybrid speciation (HHS). HHS may take place more easily than previously thought through alternate inheritance of alleles of parents at multiple RI loci. Therefore, isolation, selection and hybridization could together have promoted species diversification of numerous plant genera on the QTP sl. We emphasize the need for identification and functional analysis of alleles of major genes for speciation, and especially encourage investigations of parallel adaptive divergence causing RI across different lineages within similar but specific habitats in this region.
Premise
Hybridization is recognized as an important mechanism in fern speciation, with many allopolyploids known among congeners, as well as evidence of ancient genome duplications. Several ...contemporary instances of deep (intergeneric) hybridization have been noted, invariably resulting in sterile progeny. We chose the christelloid lineage of the family Thelypteridaceae, recognized for its high frequency of both intra‐ and intergeneric hybrids, to investigate recent hybrid speciation between deeply diverged lineages. We also seek to understand the ecological and evolutionary outcomes of resulting lineages across the landscape.
Methods
By phasing captured reads within a phylogenomic data set of GoFlag 408 nuclear loci using HybPhaser, we investigated candidate hybrids to identify parental lineages. We estimated divergence ages by inferring a dated phylogeny using fossil calibrations with treePL. We investigated ecological niche conservatism between one confirmed intergeneric allotetraploid and its diploid progenitors using the centroid, overlap, unfilling, and expansion (COUE) framework.
Results
We provide evidence for at least six instances of intergeneric hybrid speciation within the christelloid clade and estimate up to 45 million years of divergence between progenitors. The niche quantification analysis showed moderate niche overlap between an allopolyploid species and its progenitors, with significant divergence from the niche of one progenitor and conservatism to the other.
Conclusions
The examples provided here highlight the overlooked role that allopolyploidization following intergeneric hybridization may play in fern diversification and range and niche expansions. Applying this approach to other fern taxa may reveal a similar pattern of deep hybridization resulting in highly successful novel lineages.
Hybridization has long been considered a process that prevents divergence between species. In contrast to this historical view, an increasing number of empirical studies claim to show evidence for ...hybrid speciation without a ploidy change. However, the importance of hybridization as a route to speciation is poorly understood, and many claims have been made with insufficient evidence that hybridization played a role in the speciation process. We propose criteria to determine the strength of evidence for homoploid hybrid speciation. Based on an evaluation of the literature using this framework, we conclude that although hybridization appears to be common, evidence for an important role of hybridization in homoploid speciation is more circumscribed.
Species diversity is likely to undergo a sharp decline in the next century. Perhaps as many as 33 % of all plant species may expire as a result of climate change. All parts of the globe will be ...impacted, and all groups of organisms will be affected. Hundreds of species throughout the world have already experienced local extinction.
While thousands of species may become extinct in the next century and beyond, species formation will still occur. I consider which modes of plant species formation are likely to prevail in the next 500 years. I argue that speciation primarily will involve mechanisms that produce reproductively isolated lineages within less (often much less) than 100 generations. I will not especially consider the human element in promoting species formation, because it will continue and because the conclusions presented here are unaffected by it. The impact of climate change may be much more severe and widespread.
The most common modes of speciation likely to be operative in the next 500 years ostensibly will be auto- and allopolyploidy. Polyploid species or the antecedents thereof can arise within two generations. Moreover, polyploids often have broader ecological tolerances, and are likely to be more invasive than are their diploid relatives. Polyploid species may themselves spawn additional higher level polyploids either through crosses with diploid species or between pre-existing polyploids. The percentage of polyploid species is likely to exceed 50 % within the next 500 years vs. 35 % today. The stabilized hybrid derivatives (homoploid hybrid speciation) could emerge within a hundred generations after species contact, as could speciation involving chromosomal rearrangements (and perhaps number), but the number of such events is likely to be low. Speciation involving lineage splitting will be infrequent because the formation of substantive pre- and post-zygotic barriers typically takes many thousands of years.
Sunflowers of the genus Helianthus are models for hybridization research and contain three of the best-studied examples of homoploid hybrid speciation. To understand a broader picture of ...hybridization within the annual sunflowers, we used whole-genome resequencing to conduct a phylogenomic analysis and test for gene flow between lineages. We find that all annual sunflower species tested have evidence of admixture, suggesting hybridization was common during the radiation of the genus. Support for the major species tree decreases with increasing recombination rate, consistent with hybridization and introgression contributing to discordant topologies. Admixture graphs found hybridization to be associated with the origins of the three putative hybrid species (Helianthus anomalus, Helianthus deserticola, and Helianthus paradoxus). However, the hybridization events are more ancient than suggested by previous work. Furthermore, H. anomalus and H. deserticola appear to have arisen from a single hybridization event involving an unexpected donor, rather than through multiple independent events as previously proposed. This means our results are consistent with, but not definitive proof of, two ancient independent homoploid hybrid speciation events in the genus. Using a broader data set that covers the whole Helianthus genus, including perennial species, we find that signals of introgression span the genus and beyond, suggesting highly divergent introgression and/or the sorting of ancient haplotypes. Thus, Helianthus can be viewed as a syngameon in which largely reproductively isolated species are linked together by occasional or frequent gene flow.
Understanding how different driving forces have promoted biological divergence and speciation is one of the central issues in evolutionary biology. The Triticum/Aegilops species complex contains 13 ...diploid species belonging to the A-, B- and D-lineages and offers an ideal system to address the evolutionary dynamics of lineage fusion and splitting. Here, we sequenced the whole genomes of one S-genome species (Aegilops speltoides) of the B-lineage and four S*-genome diploid species (Aegilops bicornis, Aegilops longissima, Aegilops sharonensis and Aegilops searsii) of the D-lineage at the population level. We performed detailed comparisons of the five species and with the other four representative A-, B- and D-lineage species. Our estimates identified frequent genetic introgressions from A- and B-lineages to the D-lineage species. A remarkable observation is the contrasting distributions of putative introgressed loci by the A- and B-lineages along all the seven chromosomes to the extant D-lineage species. These genetic introgressions resulted in high levels of genetic divergence at centromeric regions between Ae. speltoides (B-lineage) and the other four S*-genome diploid species (D-lineage), while natural selection is a potential contributor to divergence among the four S*-genome species at telomeric regions. Our study provides a genome-wide view on how genetic introgression and natural selection acted together yet chromosome-regionally divided to promote genomic divergence among the five S- and S*-genome diploid species, which provides new and nuanced insights into the evolutionary history of the Triticum/Aegilops species complex.
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