Projects per year
Abstract
Whole-genome duplication (WGD) has occurred commonly in land plant evolution and it is often invoked as a causal agent in diversification, phenotypic and developmental innovation, as well as conferring extinction resistance. The ancient and iconic lineage of Equisetum is no exception, where WGD has been inferred to have occurred prior to the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) boundary, coincident with WGD events in angiosperms. In the absence of high species diversity, WGD in Equisetum is interpreted to have facilitated the long-term survival of the lineage. However, this characterization remains uncertain as these analyses of the Equisetum WGD event have not accounted for fossil diversity. Here, we analyse additional available transcriptomes and summarize the fossil record. Our results confirm support for at least one WGD event shared among the majority of extant Equisetum species. Furthermore, we use improved dating methods to constrain the age of gene duplication in geological time and identify two successive Equisetum WGD events. The twoWGD events occurred during the Carboniferous and Triassic, respectively, rather than in association with the K-Pg boundary. WGD events are believed to drive high rates of trait evolution and innovations, but analysed trends of morphological evolution across the historical diversity of Equisetum provide little evidence for further macroevolutionary consequences following WGD. WGD events cannot have conferred extinction resistance to the Equisetumlineage through the K-Pg boundary since the ploidy events occurred hundreds of millions of years before thismass extinction and we find evidence of extinction among fossil polyploid Equisetum lineages. Our findings precipitate the need for a review of the proposed roles of WGDs in biological innovation and extinction survival in angiosperm and non-angiosperm lineages alike.
Original language | English |
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Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Volume | 286 |
Issue number | 1914 |
Early online date | 30 Oct 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 6 Nov 2019 |
Keywords
- Extinction
- Ferns
- Genome duplication
- Macroevolution
- Polyploidy
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Origin of horsetails and the role of whole-genome duplication in plant macroevolution'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 2 Finished
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Improving Bayesian methods for estimating divergence times integrating genomic and trait data
Donoghue, P. C. J. (Principal Investigator)
25/03/16 → 31/12/21
Project: Research
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The origin of plants: genomes, rocks, and biochemical cycles./
Donoghue, P. C. J. (Principal Investigator)
1/01/16 → 31/12/18
Project: Research
Student theses
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Whole Genome Duplication and the Evolution of the Land Plant Body Plan
Clark, J. (Author), Donoghue, P. (Supervisor) & Hiscock, S. (Supervisor), 23 Jan 2019Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
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Equipment
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HPC (High Performance Computing) and HTC (High Throughput Computing) Facilities
Alam, S. R. (Manager), Williams, D. A. G. (Manager), Eccleston, P. E. (Manager) & Greene, D. (Manager)
Facility/equipment: Facility