Orchids originated in ancient Laurasia before exploding in diversity in Central America
In short: Researchers who mapped the evolutionary history of orchids discovered that these diverse flowers originated in the Late Cretaceous region of Laurasia. While their ancestors are ancient, the study found that most modern orchid species emerged relatively recently, with a significant burst of speciation occurring in Central America over the last 5 million years.
By combining high-throughput and Sanger sequencing data to build a new phylogeny, the team analyzed approximately 7% of all accepted orchid species. They compared these genetic lineages against curated global distribution data to track how the family spread and diversified over time.
A key limitation of this study is that it only covers a subset of the total orchid diversity, specifically 1921 out of 29,524 accepted species, which may affect the completeness of the geographic patterns observed.
Why it matters: Orchids are ancient plants that recently underwent a massive evolutionary explosion in the tropics of Central America.
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Sources
- Source: Research: Escobar et al. (2024). The origin and speciation of orchids. New Phytologist. · cc-by
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