Verne Grant’s scientific contributions

... With more than 4,000 vascular plant species, the Alps are one of the hotspots of European biodiversity, harbouring many endemics (Merxmüller 1954;Pawłowski 1970 Populations with multiple ploidy levels have been detected in several species; they often can co-occur in the same habitats, and it has been evidenced that this co-existence is possible due to differences in niche optima (Kolář et al. 2017). The same principles that underlie cooccurrence of closely related species, such as sympatric speciation (Grant 1981) or secondary contact after two allopatric species geographically reunite (Hvala and Wood 2012), also apply for the formation of mixed-ploidy populations within single species. Within-population cytotype diversity can either arise in situ through primary contact, or, alternatively, as the result of secondary contact following allopatric divergence of geographically isolated cytotypes (Kolář et al. 2017). ...

Reference:

Co-occurring Luzula species (Juncaceae) of different ploidies in alpine grasslands of the Eastern Alps exhibit negligible ecological differentiation at small geographic scale