Abstract
Population differentiation is a pervasive process in nature. At present, evolutionary studies on plant population differentiation address key questions by undertaking joint ecological and genetic approaches and employing a combination of molecular and experimental means. In this special issue, we gathered a collection of papers dealing with various ecological and genetic aspects of population differentiation in plants. In particular, this special issue encompasses eight research articles and two reviews covering a wide array of worldwide environments, plant functional types, genetic and genomic approaches, and common garden experiments to quantify molecular and/or quantitative trait differentiation in plant populations. Overall, this special issue stresses the validity of traditional evolutionary studies focused on plant populations, whilst emphasizing the integration of classical biological disciplines and state-of-the-art molecular techniques into a unique toolkit for evolutionary plant research.
Highlights
Introduction to the Special IssueThe ecology and genetics of population differentiation in plantsF
We gathered a collection of papers dealing with various ecological and genetic aspects of population differentiation in plants
This special issue encompasses eight research articles and two reviews covering a wide array of worldwide environments, plant functional types, genetic and genomic approaches, and common garden experiments to quantify molecular and/or quantitative trait differentiation in plant populations
Summary
Anisotropic migration, random genetic drift and natural selection shape among- and within-population patterns of genetic diversity at different spatial and temporal scales, which steadily promote population differentiation, and in the end, may lead to speciation. All the papers in this special issue share common ground They undertake joint ecological and genetic/genomic approaches to address evolutionary questions and quantify the process of differentiation based on molecular markers and/or quantitative trait variation. Genetic markers have raised as one of the most effective tools to evaluate differentiation at the population and species levels (Avise 2004) This special issue showed the power of different traditional genetic markers, such as AFLPs (Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphisms; Medrano et al 2020) and nuclear microsatellites (Muñoz-Pajares et al 2020), as well as nextgeneration technologies, such as RAD sequencing (Lin et al 2020; Silva et al 2020; Palacio-Mejía et al 2021), to explore molecular differentiation in plant populations. It is worth emphasizing the review by Honjo and Kudoh (2019) stressing the role of transcriptome data to elucidate the genetic basis of adaptive traits, which represents a promising future research line to comprehend how differentiation works at the gene level
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