Isolation in Motion: How Riverscapes Shape the Evolution of Plants in Fast-Flowing River Archipelagos

Islands serve as natural laboratories for studying evolution. In fast-flowing rivers, rapids and waterfalls are discrete rocky habitats, acting as insular freshwater landscape units. In the Neotropics, these riverine archipelagos are inhabited by one group of angiosperms, the Podostemaceae. We used Marathrum foeniculaceum, a species distributed across the Americas, to test ecological hypotheses derived from island biogeography. Using whole-genome and plastome data from individuals collected across rivers in Panama and Colombia, we investigated the extent and constraints to gene flow at multiple spatial scales using tests of gene flow under the multispecies coalescent with migration model. We further tested the hypothesis that gene flow is asymmetric and follows the direction of river flow. Our results revealed strong genetic differentiation among independent drainage basins and significant isolation-by-distance, with overland distance posing a stronger barrier to gene flow than distance along continuous river courses. Gene flow identified between adjacent rivers likely reflects historical or episodic river connections rather than frequent overland dispersals. Comparisons between nuclear and plastid data indicate stronger constraints on seed than pollen dispersal. Phylogeographic patterns in Podostemaceae further suggest an east-to-west history of river connectivity across the Isthmus of Panama. Together, these findings show that river connectivity and flow directionality structure genetic variation in strictly riverine aquatic angiosperms. Rapids and waterfalls act as evolutionary islands where dispersal limitation, localized connectivity and water flow interact to shape population differentiation in riverine landscapes.