Double Your Pleasure: What Exactly Can You Get from Polyploidy?

Polyploidy, also known as Whole Genome Duplication (WGD), means having multiple copies of your chromosomes in your genome. For unknown reasons, many flowering plants are polyploid, but polyploidy is rare in animals, although animal hybrids are common. This much is uncontroversial.

The reasons for these observations are not fully understood, nor are the implications. We know that extra copies of chromosomes can occur accidentally during cell division and persist in some plant genomes, althoug...