Polyploid complex

A polyploid complex is a group of interrelated and interbreeding plants that also have differing levels of ploidy that can allow genetic exchanges between unrelated species.

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The polyploid complex was first described by E. B. Babcock and G. Ledyard Stebbins in their 1938 monograph The American Species of Crepis: their interrelationships and distribution as affected by polyploidy and apomixis. In Crepis and some other herbaceous perennial species, a polyploid complex may arise where there are at least 2 genetically isolated diploid populations, in addition to auto- and allopolypoloid derivatives that coexist and interbreed (hybridise). Thus a complex network of interrelated forms may exist where the polyploid forms allow for genetic exchange between the diploid species that are otherwise unable to breed.^[1]

A polyploid complex has also been well described in Glycine.^[2]

This complex situation does not fit well within the biological species concept of Ernst Mayr which defines a species is defined as "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups".

References

1. ^ Stebbins, G. L., Jr. 1940. The significance of polyploidy in plant evolution. The American Naturalist 74:54-66
2. ^ Doyle, J. J. 1999. Origins, colonization, and lineage recombination in a widespread perennial soybean polyploid complex. PNAS 96:10741-10745