Biodiversity embodies the evolutionary potential of Life against global change. Among the most biodiverse regions of our planet, called diversity hotspots, are the five existing Mediterranean regions (MTEs, Mediterranean-Type Ecosystems). Among them, due to their number of species, the Mediterranean Basin (MB, Mediterranean Basin) and the Cape Region in South Africa (CFR, Cape Floristic Region) stand out.
One of the great drivers of biodiversity on our planet is the coevolution between flowers and pollinators. Particularly, the fit of the floral sexual organs (i.e. the mating phenotype) with the pollinator body has the most crucial implication in the function of the pollinator-flower interaction. Therefore, the role of pollinators and plant sexual diversity in the evolution of Mediterranean-Type Ecosystems floras is a silver bullet target for biodiversity research and conservation in Europe.
The FLAXMaTE project has investigated how the reproductive traits of flowers and pollinators promote biodiversity in MTEs. To do this, a group of 74 species of yellow flaxes (Linum spp.), wild relatives of cultivated flax, which are distributed from the MB to the CFR, passing through eastern Africa, were studied. Within this group, there is a convergence in the appearance of floral polymorphisms in the two study MTEs. It was observed that the pollination system of species determines the evolution of their mating phenotype, in a way that suggest that pollination precision is the main underlying evolutionary force. The biogeographý of species plays a role in the evolution of mating phenotypes and in the appearance of heterostyly. The occurrence of species in biodiversity hotspots, including Mediterranean-type ecosystems, does not seem to be related to the evolution of this mating system,
