A Study of Britain's Native Flowering Plants Has Led to New Insights into The Mysterious Process That Allows Wild Plants to Breed Across Species
Published:28 Apr.2023 Source:University of Edinburgh
A study of Britain's native flowering plants has led to new insights into the mysterious process that allows wild plants to breed across species -- one of plants' most powerful evolutionary forces. When wild flowering plants are sizing up others they may often end up in a marriage between close relatives rather than neighbors, a new study has revealed.
To tackle this, researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied more than 1,100 UK flowering plant species, to examine the factors that contribute most to hybrids forming. The team benefited from extensive previous studies of native British flora, and combined data on ecological factors, genetic analysis and the plants' evolutionary family tree, known as phylogeny.
Their results reveal that genetic factors -- how closely related species are -- are many times more important than ecological factors, such as geographical distance, in predicting whether hybrids form. Plants have a vast possible mating pool as pollen can travel huge distances by wind or through transport by pollinators, such as bees, whereas genetic differences between species can be hard to overcome.