New beginnings for dead ends: polyploidy, -SSE models and the dead-end hypothesis.

Background: Since the mid-20th century, it has been argued by some that the transition from diploidy to polyploidy is an 'evolutionary dead end' in plants. Although this point has been debated ever since, multiple definitions of 'dead end' have been used in the polyploidy literature, without sufficient differentiation between alternative uses.

Scope: Here, we focus on the two most common conceptions of the dead-end hypothesis currently discussed: the 'lowering diversification' hypothesis and the 'rarely successful' hypothesis.

A critique of Thompson and Ramírez-Barahona (2023) or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the fossil record.

A recent study published in by Thompson and Ramírez-Barahona (2023) argued that, according to analyses of diversification on two massive molecular phylogenies comprising thousands of species, there is no evidence that angiosperms (i.e. flowering plants) were affected by the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction.

Investigating historical drivers of latitudinal gradients in polyploid plant biogeography: A multiclade perspective.

Premise: The proportion of polyploid plants in a community increases with latitude, and different hypotheses have been proposed about which factors drive this pattern. Here, we aimed to understand the historical causes of the latitudinal polyploidy gradient using a combination of ancestral state reconstruction methods. Specifically, we assessed whether (1) polyploidization enables movement to higher latitudes (i.

The evolutionary responses of life-history strategies to climatic variability in flowering plants.

The evolution of annual or perennial strategies in flowering plants likely depends on a broad array of temperature and precipitation variables. Previous documented climate life-history correlations in explicit phylogenetic frameworks have been limited to certain clades and geographic regions. To gain insights which generalize to multiple lineages we employ a multi-clade approach analyzing 32 groups of angiosperms across eight climatic variables.

Genomics Analysis of L-DOPA Exposure in .

is a dietary specialist fruit fly that evolved from a generalist ancestor to specialize on the toxic fruit of This species pair has been the subject of numerous studies where the goal has largely been to determine the genetic basis of adaptations associated with host specialization. Because one of the most striking features of fruit is the production of toxic volatile compounds that kill insects, most genomic studies in to date have focused on gene expression responses to the toxic compounds in its food. In this study, we aim to identify new genes important for host specialization by profiling gene expression response to 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA).