Frontier Bioscience - New plant species from old genes

Hybridisation opposes speciation, because recombination in hybrids breaks down the combinations of adaptive genes (haplotypes) assembled in their parents. However, recent genomics evidence suggests that hybridisations can seed rapid radiations of new species-e.g., in Lake Victoria Cichlids (doi: 10.1038/ncomms14363). This project aims to examine whether hybridisation can account for rapid evolution of a group of plant species--the genus Antirrhinum (snapdragons).
Antirrhinum species are either small alpines or large lowland plants. Using genome resequencing, we have show that their evolutionary history began with divergence of lowland and alpine forms. However, alpines later re-evolved from within the lowland group in southeast Spain and lowland forms within the alpine group. We propose that this involved hybridisation and survival of old alpine-adapted gene combinations within in a lowland genome, or vice versa.