According to a biologist, his sighting of a second batch of new Scottish native monkey flower is the botanical equivalent of "looking at the big bang in the first milliseconds of its occurrence."
Dr. Mario Vallejo-Marin, a Plant Evolutionary Biologist from the University of Stirling, uncovered a new breed of monkey flower which suggests that the origin of species is a recurring process. Dr. Vallejo-Marin first saw the prominent yellow plant on the bank of a river while having a picnic with his family nearby Leadhills in South Lanarkshire back in 2012 and but could not spot it in any other location.
Two years later in an expedition, Dr. Vallejo-Marin encountered the second cluster of these rare flowers growing about 350 miles north, close to Stromness on the Orkney Islands.
When Dr. Vallejo-Martin observed the first monkey flower in South Lanarkshire, he was mindful that hybrids of two American plants it took after were typically sterile. However, when he closely examined that the flower have plant seeds, he packed some samples for further testing.
Scientists from Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden performed a genetic analysis of the samples to verify that Dr. Vallejo-Martin had indeed discovered a brand new species, and they assumed that the flower may have evolved about 150 years ago due to an uncommon natural cross-breeding process between the two foreign flower plants.
Based from his own analysis, Dr. Vallejo-Marin illustrated that once species is already established on a specific location, it reproduces by spreading to other areas. What happened here is that the same species evolved several times in multiple places. He said that when given conditions are in-synch, evolution is a "repeatable phenomenon."
Dr. Vallejo-Marin gave the species its scientific name, Mimulus peregrinus, which literally means 'the foreigner', giving credit to its origin from two different species, which were transported to the UK from the USA and South America in the 1800s.
Hybrids are generally known to be infertile, but this monkey flower reproduce by doubling the quantity of DNA in its cells and evolving to constitute a different kind species, known as polyploidization, the same biomechanism by which cotton, tobacco and wheat was developed.
However, Dr. Vallejo-Marin noted that they can't exactly pinpoint if Mimulus peregrinus originally evolved in the north or south of Scotland but its discovery has allowed them to understand the evolution process better.
The research was accomplished with associates from College of William and Mary, Whitman College in the US, and with Queen Mary University of London.
Photo: Franco Folini | Flickr
