Revealing Ancient Wheat Phylogenetic Diversity: Machine Learning and Logistic Regression Identify Triticum sphaerococcum in Bronze Age Iberia
Our results demonstrate substantial phylogenetic turnover in wheat over the past 4000 years, marked by regional extirpations and contraction of once-widespread lineages to central Asia. This provides rare archeological evidence for the tempo and mode of cereal phylogeography, illustrating how domesticated lineages underwent extinction and range restriction akin to wild taxa. By integrating computational morphometrics with archaeobotanical evidence, this study establishes a scalable framework for tracing cryptic phylogenetic diversity, refining models of wheat domestication and assessing long-term genetic erosion in cultivated plants.
Authors
- Concepción Obón (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0244-601X)
- María Milagrosa Ros Salá (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3597-0870)
- Н. П. Гончаров (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2967-0492)
- P. Pablo Ferrer‐Gallego (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7595-9302)
- Diego-José Rivera-Obón (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0512-2069)
- Francisco Alcaraz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3254-2691)
- Diego Rivera (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6889-714X)
- Emilio Laguna Lumbreras (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9674-2767)
- Yulia V. Kruchinina
Institutions
- Universitat de Miguel Hernández d'Elx (ES)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Generalitat Valenciana (ES)
- Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias (ES)
- Institute of Cytology and Genetics (RU)
- Universidad de Murcia (ES)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Genes
- Published
- 2025-12-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/genes16121477
- Primary Topic
- Archaeology and ancient environmental studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00