In the genus Rhododendron, hand crosses demonstrate that both triploid and tetraploid seed parents can produce diploid offspring. For flowering plants, how much evidence is there for polyploid introgression downward into the original diploid species in natural populations?
This situation can be observed in a number of hybrids, especially in unstable ones. Moreover, after polyploidization occurred, the genome size decreases with different speed in most cases because of gene loss. Even polyploid diploidization can be the result of such process. If you are interested in this field, I advise you to read manuscripts written by Douglas Soltis et al. for more information.
I know this occurs also in hybrids between Viola riviniana (functionally 4x) and V. reichenbachiana (functionally 2x), which can segregate back to either the 2x and 4x levels. There are probably examples for this in numerous genera, but you'd probably need to look into specialist literature for each genus / species group.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Agriculture
- Horticulture
- Seeds