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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Plant Systematics and Evolution

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1602041

Utilizing Target Capture Sequencing to Resolve the Speciation History of Echinacea (Asteraceae)

Provisionally accepted
  • Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

It has been difficult to resolve relationships among many important lineages within the Asteraceae family due to interspecific hybridization and rapid species diversification throughout the history of the family. Previous efforts to resolve evolutionary relationships among Echinacea species have relied heavily on variation in the plastid genome with limited analysis of nuclear loci. In this study, we combine whole plastome sequences and nuclear gene capture data to reconstruct species relationships and characterize the pace of speciation across the genus Echinacea. With more sampling of intraspecific variation in both the plastome and nuclear data, we find evidence for interspecific gene flow and reject the previously hypothesized early split between Echinacea lineages, including species with ranges centered in the eastern and midwestern U.S. At the same time, we find evidence for rapid radiation early in the history of Echinacea in agreement with previous studies. Our findings have implications for Echinacea conservation and trait evolution in the genus.

Keywords: Echinacea, Plant conservation, phylogenomics, HybSeq, Compositae-ParaLoss-1272

Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 05 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Jordan and Leebens-Mack. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: James Leebens-Mack, Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, 30602, GA, United States

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