Natural hybridization between genera that diverged from each other approximately 60 million years ago.
Abstract
A fern from the French Pyrenees-×Cystocarpium roskamianum-is a recently formed intergeneric
hybrid between parental lineages that diverged from each other approximately 60 million
years ago (mya; 95% highest posterior density: 40.2-76.2 mya). This is an extraordinarily
deep hybridization event, roughly akin to an elephant hybridizing with a manatee or
a human with a lemur. In the context of other reported deep hybrids, this finding
suggests that populations of ferns, and other plants with abiotically mediated fertilization,
may evolve reproductive incompatibilities more slowly, perhaps because they lack many
of the premating isolation mechanisms that characterize most other groups of organisms.
This conclusion implies that major features of Earth's biodiversity-such as the relatively
small number of species of ferns compared to those of angiosperms-may be, in part,
an indirect by-product of this slower "speciation clock" rather than a direct consequence
of adaptive innovations by the more diverse lineages.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Biological EvolutionFerns
France
Genetic Speciation
Hybridization, Genetic
Molecular Sequence Data
Phylogeny
Reproduction
Sequence Analysis, Protein
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10248Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1086/679662Publication Info
Rothfels, CJ; Johnson, AK; Hovenkamp, PH; Swofford, DL; Roskam, HC; Fraser-Jenkins,
CR; ... Pryer, KM (2015). Natural hybridization between genera that diverged from each other approximately 60
million years ago. Am Nat, 185(3). pp. 433-442. 10.1086/679662. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/10248.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Kathleen M. Pryer
Professor of Biology

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