The study of the mating habits of British native wildflowers is the first genetic study in the plant world.
Nationalgeographic.co.id—A new study of the plant world by scientists in the UK reveals a surprising twist about the sex life of wildflowers. They studied flowering plants native to Britain and yielded new insights into the mysterious processes that allow wild plants to reproduce across species.
Cross-species reproduction of wild plants is one of the most powerful forces of plant evolution. This finding is a surprise in the world of plant genetics.
When wild flowering plants measure up to others, they may often end up mating between close relatives rather than neighbors.
They have explained the results of the new analysis in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently. The paper was published under the title “Genetic factors predict hybrid formation in the British flora” which can be obtained online.
The finding about the mating habits of British native wildflowers is the world’s first genetic study of plants of all hybrids, that is, the offspring of two distinct species, from any native flora.
In the animal kingdom, hybrids such as mules are usually infertile and represent an evolutionary dead end. But in plants, fertile hybrids are common and can form the raw fuel that drives evolution.
Interspecies hybrids can have drastic evolutionary impacts on the plant world, from overpowering their parents to form new species to overrunning genetically endangered species and driving them towards extinction.
However, the processes that lead to the formation of hybrids between wild plant species are highly unpredictable and have baffled biologists for decades or decades.
The importance of natural hybridization in the evolutionary process has intrigued biologists for decades. However, our general understanding of natural hybridization is hindered by the complex and often idiosyncratic results of hybridization.
“Here, we investigate hybridization across all native flowering plant species in the intensively studied British flora, combining floristic and ecological data with species-level phylogeny,” the researchers wrote.
To address this, researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied more than 1,100 species of flowering plants in the UK, to examine which factors most contribute to the formation of such hybrids.
The team benefited from extensive previous studies of native British flora or plants, and combined data on ecological factors, genetic analysis and plant evolutionary family trees, known as phylogenies.
