Allo-allo-triploid Sphagnum × falcatulum: single individuals contain most of the Holantarctic diversity for ancestrally indicative markers.

Background and Aims: Allopolyploids exhibit both different levels and different patterns of genetic variation than are typical of diploids. However, scant attention has been given to the partitioning of allelic information and diversity in allopolyploids, particularly that among homeologous monoploid components of the hologenome. Sphagnum × falcatulum is a double allopolyploid peat moss that spans a considerable portion of the Holantarctic. With monoploid genomes from three ancestral species, this organism exhibits a complex evolutionary history involving serial inter-subgeneric allopolyploidizations.

Methods: Studying populations from three disjunct regions [South Island (New Zealand); Tierra de Fuego archipelago (Chile, Argentina); Tasmania (Australia)], allelic information for five highly stable microsatellite markers that differed among the three (ancestral) monoploid genomes was examined. Using Shannon information and diversity measures, the holoploid information, as well as the information within and among the three component monoploid genomes, was partitioned into separate components for individuals within and among populations and regions, and those information components were then converted into corresponding diversity measures.

Key Results: The majority (76 %) of alleles detected across these five markers are most likely to have been captured by hybridization, but the information within each of the three monoploid genomes varied, suggesting a history of recurrent allopolyploidization between ancestral species containing different levels of genetic diversity. Information within individuals, equivalent to the information among monoploid genomes (for this dataset), was relatively stable, and represented 83 % of the grand total information across the Holantarctic, with both inter-regional and inter-population diversification each accounting for about 5 % of the total information.

Conclusions: Sphagnum × falcatulum probably inherited the great majority of its genetic diversity at these markers by reticulation, rather than by subsequent evolutionary radiation. However, some post-hybridization genetic diversification has become fixed in at least one regional population. Methodology allowing statistical analysis of any ploidy level is presented.