MULTIPLE COLONIZATIONS OF ASPLENIUM ADIANTUM-NIGRUM ONTO THE HAWAIIAN ARCHIPELAGO

The extreme isolation and mid-Pacific origin of the Hawaiian archipelago has ensured that all indigenous organisms have arrived via long-distance dispersal or have evolved from successfully colonizing species. Although this isolation has also produced high rates of species endemism in angiosperms (89% or more), that rate in pteridophytes is considerably less (76%). The ratio of native species to the estimated number of original successful colonizing species in angiosperms (3.4) is more than double that for pteridophytes (1.6). One possible explanation for the lower speciation rate in pteridophytes is that populations of these species are more likely to experience interpopulational gene flow because of the great vagility of their wind-dispersed spores. We conducted isozymic surveys of populations from the island of Hawaii of the indigenous allotetraploid species Asplenium adiantum-nigrum, putatively derived from two strictly European diploid taxa. Our data support multiple hybrid origins for the populations surveyed, with a minimum of 3, and possibly as many as 17, discrete hybridization events having produced the genetic diversity observed. Since the parental taxa are not found in Hawaii, each hybrid lineage must have arrived in the archipelago independently of the others. Similar long-distance, repeated dispersal events may be occurring between insular and noninsular populations of other native pteridophytes in Hawaii and in other insular regions of the world, thus contributing to the relatively low rates of speciation and insular endemism in this ancient group of plants.