A NEW wildflower that has evolved in the past 200 years has been uncovered on a Scottish island. Researchers say the discovery of Shetland’s monkeyflower shows a major evolutionary step can take place over decades, not millennia.
Professor Dr Mario Vallejo-Marin, of the biological and environmental sciences department at Stirling University, said: “Evolution is often thought to be a slow process taking thousands or millions of years.
“We have shown a major evolutionary step can occur in a couple of hundred years.”
The red-spotted plant is descended from the non-native yellow monkeyflower, which colonised the UK in Victorian times, and has evolved through the doubling of the number of chromosomes, known as genome duplication or polyploidy.
Larger than its predecessor, which is common in western North America, its flowers are also more open.
The Stirling team made the find in a “chance encounter” during fieldwork near the village of Quarff, south of Lerwick, with Dr James Higgins of Leicester University.
They measured the plant’s genome size and surveyed 30 populations of monkeyflowers from Shetland and other parts of the UK, growing the plants under controlled conditions and comparing characteristics, before confirming the existence of a new variety.
Polyploidy was key to the development of many crops such as coffee, potatoes and tobacco, but examples in recent history are rare.
The Stirling team says the plant provides the chance to learn more about the evolutionary process at a key time in history.
Vallejo-Marin said: “The fact the new polyploid involves a non-native plant is poignant, given the fact that human activities are transporting all sorts of animal and plant species well beyond their native habitats.
“This raises the possibility that non-native species may increasingly participate in major biological processes, including the formation of new types of plants and animals.”
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