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Abstract Detail



Reticulate evolution and biogeography in ferns and lycophytes - a colloquium honoring Dr. David Barrington

Gilman, Arthur [1], Farrar, Donald [2], Popovich, Steve [3].

Persistence Pays Off: Long term field work in the Rockies yields another species of reticulate origin in the Moonwort Complex.

The North American Moonwort Complex has yielded more than 20 new species over the past 40 years, tripling our knowledge of its diversity. Underpinning this late increase in alpha-diversity, compared to other North American ferns, has been a sustained effort by many field botanists, including US Forest Service and Park Service personnel and other citizen scientists, who have searched diligently for these small, hard-to-find plants. They have forwarded a steady stream of material for cytological, allozyme, and DNA analyses that have parsed out the various species to reveal an extensive and intricate polyploid complex spanning the continent. Here we present a new species that was first found at Glacier National Park in 1996 and later revealed to be present, under several informal names, at numerous Rocky Mountain locations. Connecting the dots to understand that these scattered populations represent one species took more than 20 years. The new species, Botrychium 'furculatum', or “wishbone moonwort” is an allotetraploid that our data indicate shares the genomes of the widespread eastern diploid, B. pallidum, and a second, as yet undescribed diploid recently discovered in northern Wyoming.


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1 - Po Box 82, Marshfield, VT, 05658, United States
2 - Iowa State University, Department Of Ecology, Evolution And Organismal Biology, 251 Bessey Hall, Ames, IA, 50011.0, United States
3 - 1487 N Challenger Dr, Pueblo West, CO, 81007

Keywords:
moonworts
reticulate evolution
Rocky Mountains.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Session: CO09, Reticulate evolution and biogeography in ferns and lycophytes - a colloquium honoring Dr. David Barrington
Location: San Luis 2/Starr Pass
Date: Tuesday, July 30th, 2019
Time: 2:00 PM
Number: CO09003
Abstract ID:179
Candidate for Awards:Edgar T. Wherry award


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