Format: ORAL

Andrea E. Berardi1

1 Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

Determining how and why reproductive traits evolve between and within species is key to understanding patterns of speciation. In plants, both genome duplication as well as selection on floral traits, such as color, have been major drivers of angiosperm diversification. Silene (Caryophyllaceae) is a largely white- and pink-flowering diploid genus distributed throughout temperate regions. However, at least two independent polyploidization events occurred in the genuss expansion into North America, and most extant North American species are at least tetraploids. Two novel floral pigmentation strategies arose in the North American polyploids red flower color and UV bullseyes. Insights into how these two floral color traits arose as well as the revised phylogeny of North American Silene polyploids are made from target capture of herbarium specimens, gene silencing, and character mapping of floral pigments to answer the following questions: What is the most likely driver of floral color evolution in Silene - pollinator shifts, habitat specialization, sympatric competition, abiotic factors, or polyploidy?