The population structure of invasive Lantana camara is shaped by its mating system

Over the last century, invasive species have emerged as an important driver of global biodiversity loss. Many invasive species have low genetic diversity in the invaded habitats, owing to the demographic bottleneck during introduction. Lantana camara is one of the hundred most problematic invasive species globally. Despite its ecological importance in many countries, our understanding of the genetic diversity patterns of this plant remains poor. Previous studies hypothesize that invasive L. camara is a species complex with a hybrid origin, but this remains untested. We investigated the population genetic patterns of this invasive species by sampling 359 plants that represented a spectrum of flower colour variants across 36 locations, spanning most of the biogeographic regions across India. Analyses of the population structure using 19,008 SNPs revealed that L. camara in India exhibits a strong genetic structure. Interestingly, the structuring pattern does not exhibit a strong correlation with geography. In the structure analysis, individuals with similar flower colours clustered together regardless of their location of origin. The genetic distance between most of the individuals was low, indicating the absence of multiple species. A high inbreeding coefficient and a low proportion of heterozygous sites observed suggested that the strong structure could be due to self-fertilization. Thus we infer that L. camara exists as homozygous inbred lines formed by self-fertilization and that these inbred lines could be associated with distinct flower colours. Together, this would explain the correlation between flower colour and genetic structure, and the lack of geographic structure. These results refute the argument that L. camara is a species complex and emphasize the importance of the mating system in shaping the patterns of diversity in this invasive species. Our findings highlight a hitherto unknown role for mating systems in invasive species, furthering our understanding of evolution in invasive species.