Rapid ecological speciation in gall inducers.
Martinson VG, Baine Q, Londoño-Gaviria M, Sikora HE, Gulisija I
Native Plants
Those lumpy growths you notice on shrubs along roadsides and trails are actually the result of an insect and plant co-evolving so tightly that they've driven the birth of entirely new species — a miniature speciation drama playing out in the native plants of your local landscape.
Scientists studied two species of flies that each cause their host shrub to grow a unique type of swelling called a gall, which the fly larvae live inside. When researchers swapped the flies onto the 'wrong' variety of plant, the flies couldn't survive or make galls — they were just too specialized. Remarkably, this extreme specialization led the two fly populations to become completely separate species in less than 110,000 years, which is very fast in evolutionary terms.
Key Findings
The two fly species diverged into reproductively isolated species in only 72,000–110,000 years, an unusually rapid rate of speciation.
Purebred flies and even first- and second-generation hybrids failed to successfully induce galls on the alternate host plant variety, demonstrating near-complete 'immigrant inviability'.
Genomic analysis showed high genetic differentiation (FST) and low gene flow between the two species despite living in the same geographic area, confirming that host-plant specialization alone drove their separation.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Two closely related flies that form galls on rubber rabbitbrush evolved into separate species surprisingly fast — in under 110,000 years — because each became so genetically locked to its specific host plant variety that it can't survive on the other's plant.
Abstract Preview
Ecological speciation in phytophagous insects is often mediated by adaptation to the host plant (e.g., chemical defenses, phenology) -which can subsequently lead to non-random mating on divergent h...
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