The Centaurea alba complex in the Iberian Peninsula: gene flow, introgression, and blurred genetic boundaries

Centaurea Subsect. Phalolepis (Compositae, Cardueae): A Case Study of Mountain-Driven Allopatric Speciation in the Mediterranean Peninsulas

“…Despite the presence of mountain ranges arranged generally in an east-west direction (Pyrenees, Cantabrian Mountains, and the Iberian, Central and Penibaetic ranges), most of the territory is occupied by a 600 m high plateau, the Meseta. It constitutes a wide area that is open for migrations and expansions that impede isolation in the mountains, as verified in other studies on Centaurea [13,21].…”

“…We focused our study on a wide environment, namely the mountains of the south of the Mediterranean region, by using the Phalolepis subsection of the genus Centaurea as a model. This group of ~40 species has already been used as a model in a series of studies exploring the correlation between genetic data and taxonomy [10][11][12][13] that emphasized the importance of the mountains in the speciation of the group. Phalolepis has diversified in several nuclei that coincide with some of the main hotspots and refuges [5] of the Mediterranean Region: Anatolia, South Balkans (Greece), the Italian Peninsula and the Iberian Peninsula.…”

“…The tentative conclusion of the four studies carried out on the Phalolepis subsect. of Centaurea [10][11][12][13] is that the correlations among the number of species, genetic data and classification reached their maximum in the two regions with the most rugged topography, namely Anatolia and Greece. In these two regions, the number of endemic Centaurea species is the highest, and the studies confirmed that they are genetically well-defined species [10,11].…”

Hybphaser identifies hybrid evolution in Australian Thelypterid ferns

“…Speciation resulting from vicariance or dispersal, selection, gene polymorphism and genome duplication are well understood (Pinheiro et al, 2018; Galtier, 2019). There is a growing body of research revealing that hybridization is also an important contributor to speciation, and that it may be more common than previously known (Mallet, 2007; Soltis & Soltis, 2009; Abbott et al, 2013; Vaux et al, 2016; Kinosian et al, 2020; Nauheimer et al, 2020; Requena et al, 2020, Rutherford 2020; Ottenburghs, 2020). A reticulate evolutionary history may be important for generation of future diversification and a key to the successful radiation of some groups (Goulet et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2020; Requena et al, 2020).…”

“…There is a growing body of research revealing that hybridization is also an important contributor to speciation, and that it may be more common than previously known (Mallet, 2007; Soltis & Soltis, 2009; Abbott et al, 2013; Vaux et al, 2016; Kinosian et al, 2020; Nauheimer et al, 2020; Requena et al, 2020, Rutherford 2020; Ottenburghs, 2020). A reticulate evolutionary history may be important for generation of future diversification and a key to the successful radiation of some groups (Goulet et al, 2017; Liu et al, 2020; Requena et al, 2020). Hybrid speciation and introgression may be an important reason evolutionary relationships have been difficult to resolve using phylogeny in some groups of plants (Mallet et al, 2016).…”