Fungus gnats might not be a glamorous group of insects but they are important pollinators, especially attracted to plants with dark red flowers. Not much is known about their pollination behaviour and plant species...
Tag - speciation
Juniper Kiss
Chromosomal changes more important than niche differentiation in a Pulmonaria hybrid
The locally abundant hybrid species is well-defined, but shows weak niche differentiation from its progenitors.
Erin Zimmerman
Pollinators drive floral evolution in an Atlantic Forest genus
Can we use floral traits to accurately predict hummingbird and bat pollinators of the bromeliad genus Vriesea?
William Salter
Sweetcorn a better target than other maizes for Zinc biofortification
Earlier consumption and less processing makes sweetcorn a better source of dietary zinc.
Where do all the Epipactis orchids come from?
Botanists use the orchid genus Epipactis as a model for speciation, but unravelling its family tree has been difficult.
Alex Assiry
A change in pollinator alone does not explain speciation
How do plant species diverge? The Grant-Stebbin model describes pollinator-driven speciation. The idea is that plants adapt their flowers to work with the mosr effective pollinators in an area. When there are different...
Fi Gennu
Thirty clues to the exceptional diversification of flowering plants
As angiosperms became one of the megadiverse groups of macroscopic eukaryotes, they forged modern ecosystems and promoted the evolution of extant terrestrial biota. Unequal distribution of species among lineages...
Polyploidy and interspecific hybridization shape adaptation, speciation and evolution
About half of all higher plant species are recognizable as evolutionarily recent polyploids, where multiple whole genomes or sets of chromosomes have come together from close ancestors. Additionally, over evolutionary...
botanyone
Intrinsic post-zygotic barriers play a key role in maintaining species boundaries in Eucalyptus
Larcombe et al. present a 20-year assessment of reproductive isolation in a forest tree system. They show that intermediate inheritance of floral morphology results in the loss of strong mechanical barriers to zygote...
Genomic architecture of phenotypic divergence between two hybridizing plant species along an elevational gradient
Hybrid zones that occur across environmental gradients provide excellent opportunities for studying the maintenance of divergent adaptations in the presence of gene flow. They also provide insight into the biodiversity...
AoBPLANTS
Mycorrhizal associations in recently diverged Epipactis species
In orchid species that have populations occurring in strongly contrasting habitats, mycorrhizal divergence and other habitat-specific adaptations may lead to the formation of reproductively isolated taxa and ultimately...
The significance of developmental robustness for species diversity
Why some taxa are more species-rich than others still represents a major conundrum in biology. Ecological opportunities and evolutionary innovations are considered main factors that drive biodiversity, but are sometimes...
Ecological differentiation of Senecio by ploidy is stronger in areas of sympatry
Characterizing ecological niches via Landolt indicator values of accompanying species, Sonnleitner et al. found that niches of four groups (two diploids, one tetraploid, one hexaploid) of Senecio carniolicus s.l...
250 years of hybridization between two biennial herb species without speciation
In 1759, Linnaeus convinced his followers that plants could hybridize by crossing flowers in the daisy family and producing intermediate offspring. These hybrids, between Tragopogon pratensis and T. porrifolius, exist...
