Abstract

Deciphering signalling pathways is essential to understanding how organisms respond to environmental cues but elucidating how these signalling pathways evolve in new environments is less clear.1,2 Most plants, for example, monitor multiple environmental cues to optimize the time and place to germinate. Some root parasitic plants, however, germinate in response to small molecules like strigolactones (SLs) emanating from host roots3,4 whilst a number of ephemeral weeds germinate in response to chemicals called karrikins (KARs) released after a forest fire.5,6 Although these species represent distinct clades, they use the same HYPOSENSITIVE TO LIGHT/KARRIKIN INSENSITIVE 2 (HTL/KAI2) signalling pathway to perceive strigolactones or karrikins, which suggests convergent evolution.3,5 Because specialist lifestyles are derived traits, it is not clear if HTL/KAI2 signalling in these species evolved from a specific germination-signalling pathway or whether this pathway had other functions that were co-opted for specialist germination circumstances. Here, we show HTL/KAI2 signalling in Arabidopsis bypasses the light requirement for germination. In part, this is because the HTL/KAI2 downstream component, SMAX1 impinges on PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR 1/PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR 3-LIKE 5 (PIF1/PIL5)-regulated hormone response pathways conducive to germination. We identified Arabidopsis accessions that can germinate in the dark, which had altered expression of HTL/KAI2 signalling components, suggesting that divergence in this signalling pathway occurs in nature. Moreover, Arabidopsis HTL/KAI2-regulated gene signatures were observed in germinating Striga seed. The ability of HTL/KAI2 signalling to substitute for light advances an explanation for how some specialist plants evolved their underground germination behaviour in response to specific environments.