Assessing Specialized Metabolite Diversity in the Cosmopolitan Plant Genus Euphorbia L.

ABSTRACT: Coevolutionary theory suggests that an arms race between plants and herbivores yields increased plant specialized metabolite diversity and the geographic mosaic theory of coevolution predicts that coevolutionary interactions vary across geographic scales. Consequently, plant specialized metabolite diversity is expected to be highest in coevolutionary hotspots, geographic regions, which exhibit strong reciprocal selection on the interacting species. Despite being well-established theoretical frameworks, technical limitations have precluded rigorous hypothesis testing. Here we aim at understanding how geographic separation over evolutionary time may have impacted chemical differentiation in the cosmopolitan plant genus Euphorbia. We use a combination of state-of-the-art computational

SUBMITTER: Ernst M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6615404 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature