Pervasive introgression during rapid diversification of the European mountain genus Soldanella (L.) (Primulaceae)

Hybridization is a key mechanism involved in lineage diversification and speciation, especially in ecosystems that experienced repeated environmental oscillations. Recently radiated plant groups, which have evolved in mountain ecosystems impacted by historical climate change provide an excellent model system for studying the impact of gene flow on speciation. We combined organellar (whole plastome) and nuclear genomic data (RAD-seq) with a cytogenetic approach (rDNA FISH) to investigate the effects of hybridization and introgression on evolution and speciation in the genus Soldanella (snowbells, Primulaceae). Pervasive introgression has already occurred among ancestral lineages of snowbells and has persisted throughout the entire evolutionary history of the genus, regardless of the ecology, cytotype, or distribution range size of the affected species. The highest extent of introgression has been detected in the Carpathian species, which is also reflected in their extensive karyotype var..., Libraries for Rad sequencing were sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 at the sequencing facility of the Vienna BioCenter Core Facilities.
Plastome data represents genome skimming data generated by the sequencing project PhyloAlps., Word, Excel, FigTree