Hybridization of invasive Phragmites australis with a native subspecies in North America

By L. Meyerson, David Viola, R. Brown. Biological Invasions, 2009

118 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Interspecific hybridization can lead to the extinction of native populations and increased aggressiveness in hybrid forms relative to their parental lineages. However, interbreeding among subspecies is less often recognized as a serious threat to native species. Phragmites australis offers an excellent opportunity to investigate intraspecific hybridization since both native and introduced lineages occur in North America. Introduced Phragmites is a highly successful estuarine plant invader throughout North America, but native Phragmites populations are declining in the eastern US. Despite range overlaps, hybridization has not yet been detected between the native and introduced lineages in the wild, suggesting that phenological or physiological barriers preclude cross-pollination. We demonstrate, for the first time, that native and introduced populations of Phragmites can hybridize. There is substantial overlap in flowering period between native and introduced populations from the same geographic locations. We manually cross-pollinated native individuals with pollen from introduced Phragmites and recovered viable offspring. We then used microsatellite markers to prove that alleles unique to the pollen parent were transferred to progeny. Our results imply a mechanism for the further decline of native Phragmites in North America and a potential for the formation of aggressive hybrid offspring.

Subfields: Ecology, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d8320c6761e1f8c7dbeb48ecc7de9aac09e8d0b3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Oceanography

Citations in the corpus

Genetics and Reproduction of Common (Phragmites australis) and Giant Reed (Arundo donax) (2010, background): “However, P. a. ssp. americanus has lower seed germination rates (Meyerson et al. 2009) and produces fewer rhizomes than introduced P. australis on an annual basis, at least in the early stages of growth (League et al. 2006; Saltonstall and Stevenson 2007; Vasquez et al. 2005).”
Phragmites australis as a model organism for studying plant invasions (2016, unknown): “…the globe working to identify lineages, subspecies, haplotypes (Saltonstall 2003a, b; Saltonstall et al. 2004; Meyerson and Cronin 2013), and hybrids of P. australis (Saltonstall et al. 2016, this issue; Lambertini et al. 2012; Lambert et al. 2016, this issue; Meyerson et al. 2010a, b, 2012).”
Genetic, morphological, and chemical patterns of plant hybridization (2014, methodology): “The techniques mentioned so far have been widely employed for hybrid recognition (Blair and Hufbauer 2010; Meyerson et al. 2010; Travis et al. 2010; Zalapa et al. 2010; Saad et al. 2011; Tovar-Sánchez et al. 2012).”
Hitting the right target: taxonomic challenges for, and of, plant invasions (2013, background): “…structuring and population diversity have been found between the native and introduced lineages (Saltonstall 2002; Meyerson et al. 2009; Kettenring and Mock 2012) and some evidence for hybridization has begun to emerge (e.g. Meyerson et al. 2010b, 2012; Paul et al. 2010; Lambertini et al. 2012).”
Gone but Not Forgotten? Invasive Plants' Legacies on Community and Ecosystem Properties (2012, background): “In another example, Meyerson et al. (2010) found that co-occurring native and invasive subspecies of common reed [Phragmites australis (Cav.)”