Hybridisation and allopolyploidy can happen between lineages that diverged a long time ago. The 'widest' hybrids that I am aware of are a fern (xCystocarpium roskamianum; Rothfels et al. 2015) and a Viola (V. rostrata × violacea; Yoshida et al. 2015) whose parental lineages diverged ~60 and 15-20 Ma ago, respectively. Similarly, the 'widest' allopolyploids that I am aware of are two grasses (Ampelodesmos mauritanicus, Trikeraia pappiformis; Hochbach et al. 2015) which may be recent and whose parental lineages may have diverged >44 Ma ago.
Does anyone here know of other, and possibly more extreme, cases?
Thanks for your help.
Thomas
All I can say is 'whenever you see a time estimate in the evolutionary literature, demand uncertainty'. From: Dan Graur and William Martin, “Reading the Entrails of Chickens: Molecular Timescales of Evolution and the Illusion of Precision”, Trends in Genetics 20 (2004): 80–86.
Good point Andrew. I noted a hybrid between two Pinus species from the two major sections in the genus. Now the divergence time between the two sections was estimated to be over 100 Mya in the most accepted dated phylogenetic tree ten years ago. A more recent phylogeny however brought this down to a quarter of that value...
Thanks for your answers, but my point was not to start a discussion about dating phylogenies, for which we have both better tools and skills than ten years ago. My point was to get an idea of how long lineages may retain the ability to interbreed (apparently >20 Ma) which directly adds to the uncertainty on estimates of the "origin" of polyploid lineages, e.g. by Ks-based methods, when diploid parents are not known.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Evolutionary Biology
- Phylogenetics