Plant Diversity ›› 2012, Vol. 34 ›› Issue (3): 257-262.DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1143.2012.11187

• Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Gene Flow Dependent Introgression and Species Delimitation

 DU  Fang, XU  Fang   

  1. Center for Computational Biology, National Engineering Laboratory for Tree Breeding, College of Bioscience
    and Technology, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
  • Received:2011-12-16 Online:2012-06-25 Published:2012-02-02
  • Supported by:

    Young Scientist Fund (2010BLX01) and the Fundamental Research Funds (YX201123) in BJFU Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (2011DD14120014) and an open funding (K1004) from Beijing Normal University to FKD

Abstract:

Species delimitation is one of the most fundamental issues in biology and has recently drawn significant interest. A main reason for the increasing interests was the barcoding initiative associated rapid development of molecular techniques. One of the most important principles to diagnose species or species groups is to choose appropriate markers. However, incomplete linkage sorting and introgression, which are widespread phenomena in plants, present major obstacles in species delimitation. Recently, significant progress in our understanding of gene flow dependent introgression and species delimitation has been made both theoretically and empirically. In this paper, we reviewed the gene flow mediated speciation; evaluated the difference of introgression and incomplete linkage sorting; and finally concluded that species delimitation should be more effective with markers experiencing high levels of gene flow.

Key words: Species delimitation, Molecular Marker, DNA barcoding, Species introgression, Incomplete linkage sorting, Gene flow

CLC Number: