Study Reveals Why Plants are Diverse in Places with Stable Climate

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, has debunked a long-standing hypothesis about plant speciation or the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution. The results of their study suggests that agricultural crops could be more vulnerable to climate change than was previously believed.

Plants can tolerate multiple copies of their genes. Some plants called polyploids, can have more than 50 duplicates of their genomes in every cell. Scientists used to think that these extra genomes helped polyploids survive in new and extreme environments, like the tropics or the Arctic, promoting the establishment of new species. However, Dr. Kelsey Glennon and colleagues found that, more often than not, polyploids have the same habitats as their close relatives with normal genome sizes. This implies that environmental factors do not play a large role in the establishment of new plant species and that maybe other factors, like the ability to spread your seeds to new locations with similar habitats, are more important. "This study has implications for agriculture and climate change because all of our important crops are polyploids and they might not be much better at adapting to changing climate than their wild relatives if they live in similar climates," said Dr. Glennon.

The study also provides an alternative explanation for why plants are so diverse in places like the Cape where the climate has been stable for hundreds of thousands of years. The study involved plant species from North America and Europe and will soon be conducted in South African plants.

For more details, visit http://www.wits.ac.za/newsroom/newsitems/201402/22941/news_item_22941.html.