Whole-genome duplication leads to significant but inconsistent changes in climatic niche

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary Biology
• Genomics
• Ecology

Background:

• Polyploidization, or whole-genome duplication (WGD), is a significant evolutionary event with broad impacts on organismal traits.
• The relationship between polyploidization and predictable shifts in ecological niches remains poorly understood, with conflicting results from previous studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether whole-genome duplication (WGD) consistently alters climatic niche and range size in mixed-ploidy plant species.
• To determine if polyploidization leads to predictable changes in ecological preferences across diverse plant taxa.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a unified statistical framework analyzing 25,857 georeferenced, ploidy-verified occurrence data for 129 mixed-ploidy flowering plant species.
• Employed niche modeling on a subset of 75 densely sampled species to assess past, current, and future range sizes and climatic niche shifts associated with polyploidization.

Main Results:

• A significant niche shift was observed in 74% of species following polyploidization (WGD).
• No consistent environmental parameter was identified as the primary driver for ploidy-related niche differentiation across species.
• Evidence for consistent polyploid range or niche expansion was not found in the subset of species analyzed.

Conclusions:

• Polyploidization significantly influences species' niche evolution, but the specific environmental drivers are species-dependent.
• The ecological outcomes of whole-genome duplication (WGD) exhibit limited predictability in ecological space, highlighting the complexity of polyploid adaptation.