Lupinus Species in Central Mexico in the Era of Climate Change: Adaptation, Migration, or Extinction?

Molecular and Chemical Markers to Illustrate the Complex Diversity of the Genus Lupinus (Fabaceae)

“…Accessions of 66 species covering the entire distribution area of Lupinus (Old and New World) can be download in GenBank (Table S1) or were already published directly in literature [6,13,14]. Most sequences came from the laboratories of Wink and Äinouche [6,13,14] and additive sequences of Mexican species were obtained by Bermudez-Torres [5,11,12] or this study (Table S1 for accession numbers). Note that several sequences of various species were obtained (the total dataset is of 188 individuals) but only a single individual per species is shown here as no or very few intraspecific differences were observed (data not shown).…”

“…Almost exclusively, annual species are found in lower elevations (for instance, all taxa from the Old World are annual) and semelparity (associated to annual life) could represent an adaptive process to grow in lowlands. On the contrary, iteroparity (the mode of reproduction found in perennial lupins) is a key innovation for dispersing and colonizing montane habitats, like in Western America [5,9,47]. A more exhaustive and detailed comparison of QA patterns of American species growing in similar habitats could be one way to test this hypothesis.…”

“…In complement to the first hypothesis, we can also evoke a common biosynthesis pathway, which would result in a common ancestry involving migration events from Old World to Eastern New World. In Lupinus, the divergence between Europe and America was dated from less than 10 Mya and the favored mechanism of dispersal across the Atlantic Ocean has been the long distance dispersal (LDD) with two supposed independent events [3,5,6]. Already Charles Darwin had discussed potential dispersal mechanism, such as transport of seeds across the oceans, or by wind or birds.…”

“…The genus Lupinus L. (Fabaceae) comprises an uncertain number of annual and perennial plants as 200, 280, 300, and more than 500 species have been proposed by various authors [1][2][3][4][5], a rigorous taxonomic, morphometric, systematic, and molecular revision is urgently required. Originating from the Mediterranean basin with only a dozen of species found in Europe, North Africa, and in the Middle East, lupins show an impressive radiation in the New World [6][7][8][9].…”