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The world's newest flower is a species less than 140 years old hailing from southern Scotland, but its parents are from the Andes and North America's west coast. The yellow monkey flower, or Mimulus peregrinus—Latin for "wanderer," is described in the journal Phytokeys. (Click on the image for higher resolution.)
Mario Vallejo-Marin, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland, discovered M. peregrinus on a stream bank. Leaf and flower characteristics indicate its ancestors are M. guttatus and M. luteus, two species of monkey flowers transported from the Americas and cultivated by Victorian gardeners in the 1800s.
M. peregrinus's genus turns up around the world but most species grow in North America and Australia. Different monkey flower species can hybridize, although their offspring carry an odd number of chromosomes, rendering them sterile. "The classic example is if you cross a horse and a donkey, you get a sterile individual—a mule," Vallejo-Marin says. A rare mutation duplicated the entire genome of M. peregrinus. This polyploidic event evened out the number of chromosomes and the flower avoided a genetic dead-end.
"Theory predicted this plant would exist somewhere, and every time we came across a patch of hybrids, I would look," Vallejo-Marin says. On a trip with his family, he discovered a patch of hybrid flowers producing plenty of seeds. After analyzing the DNA, he confirmed the new species.
Several other species have cropped up this way over the past 200 years, but the recent discovery gives scientists a chance to watch the origin of a species as it happens. New genetic characteristics may arise as M. peregrinus spreads in the wild. The polyploidy is a "genomic revolution," says Vallejo-Marin, because the plant has twice the amount of genetic material it can use to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Adaptability gives invasive species their edge, he says, and could help life cope with climate change.
—Marissa Fessenden
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12 Comments
Add CommentBut wait! Evolution is only a theory!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat makes it a new species? Is there some magic cutoff of genetic mutations that is being used to identify this as a new species? I was always taught that the genetic definition of species varies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIdeally, a species is defined as a species if it can breed true (ie, viable F1 and F2 offspring) with other members of that species, and not with anything else. That's happening here: this species has duplicated its entire genome (which surprisingly is relatively common among plants), rendering it incompatible with everything it would formerly have been able to breed with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut you're right though, "species" is a very hairy concept, and often it does come down to the judgement of scientists involved, though in cases like this where it boils down to a question of reproductive compatibility you won't find much dissent. Wikipedia has a fairly decent article on this question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
Hmmm? New species of plants are found in the world weekly... Go to botanical journals. Almost any botanical outing can find new species of agiosperms if that is the goal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*Interesting article but a off-the-mark headline.
Evolution has been proven as a fact over and over again with all kinds of species including bacteria and birds as examples. Look it up for yourself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI beg to to differ. Yes, new species are being discovered on a regular basis. The significance of this one is that it is a reproductively viable hybrid. Mr. Vallejo-Marin is now (if not already) published (Phytokeys) and has acquired quite a feather in the cap of his career for this discovery. I agree with off-the-mark headline.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was being facetious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the point is the species itself is very young, not its description (which is the typical use of "new species")
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, the typical use of the phrase "new species" means newly discovered species.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy apologies. I did not adequately consider your comment before replying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is indeed a new species in that it's a hybrid which has recently arisen between two existing species, and it's fertile. It's also new in that it's new to us - we've only just found it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only bit which I think is a bit misleading in the article is the sentence 'A rare mutation duplicated the entire genome of M. peregrinus.'
In any individual plant this may be a rare mutation, but evolutionary biologists have already realized that such duplications must have happened many times in natural history, because of the huge numbers of (especially) plants with large numbers of pairs of chromosomes - and even numbers at that. Cultivated apple varieties are well-know for this, with some varieties being diploid or triploid, with twice or three times the pairs of chromososmes which the others have (this has implications for which varieties can pollinate each other).
For an interesting discussion of polyploidy, having more than one set of chromosomes, see Stephen Jay Gould's essay 'The Ant and the Plant' in the collection 'Bully for Brontosaurus', published in 1991.
How fascinating. I would love to discover a new species myself.
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