Did a plant-herbivore arms race drive chemical diversity in Euphorbia?
By
Madeleine Ernst,
Louis-Felix Nothias,
Justin J.J. van der Hooft,
R. R. Silva,
C. H. Saslis-Lagoudakis,
O. M. Grace,
K. Martinez-Swatson,
G. Hassemer,
L. A. Funez,
H. T. Simonsen,
M. H. Medema,
D. Staerk,
N. Nilsson,
P. Lovato,
Pieter C. Dorrestein,
N. Rønsted
Posted 15 May 2018
bioRxiv DOI: 10.1101/323014
The genus Euphorbia is among the most diverse and species-rich plant genera on Earth, exhibiting a near-cosmopolitan distribution and extraordinary chemical diversity, especially across highly toxic macro- and polycyclic diterpenoids. However, very little is known about drivers and evolutionary origins of chemical diversity within Euphorbia. Here, we investigate 43 Euphorbia species to understand how geographic separation over evolutionary time has impacted chemical differentiation. We show that the structurally highly diverse Euphorbia diterpenoids are significantly reduced in species native to the Americas, compared to the Eurasian and African continents, where the genus originated. The localization of these compounds to young stems and roots suggest ecological relevance in herbivory defense and immunomodulatory defense mechanisms match diterpenoid levels, indicating chemoevolutionary adaptation to reduced herbivory pressure.
Download data
- Downloaded 579 times
- Download rankings, all-time:
- Site-wide: 39,367
- In evolutionary biology: 2,128
- Year to date:
- Site-wide: 79,393
- Since beginning of last month:
- Site-wide: 112,410
Altmetric data
Downloads over time
Distribution of downloads per paper, site-wide
PanLingua
News
- 27 Nov 2020: The website and API now include results pulled from medRxiv as well as bioRxiv.
- 18 Dec 2019: We're pleased to announce PanLingua, a new tool that enables you to search for machine-translated bioRxiv preprints using more than 100 different languages.
- 21 May 2019: PLOS Biology has published a community page about Rxivist.org and its design.
- 10 May 2019: The paper analyzing the Rxivist dataset has been published at eLife.
- 1 Mar 2019: We now have summary statistics about bioRxiv downloads and submissions.
- 8 Feb 2019: Data from Altmetric is now available on the Rxivist details page for every preprint. Look for the "donut" under the download metrics.
- 30 Jan 2019: preLights has featured the Rxivist preprint and written about our findings.
- 22 Jan 2019: Nature just published an article about Rxivist and our data.
- 13 Jan 2019: The Rxivist preprint is live!