Genome duplication

[Cat]

Evidence suggests that at some points in time most of species alive today undergone whole genome duplications. Presumably, these events occurred to prevent extinction of those species which threatened those species after diversification event(http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/2 ... l.pdf+html).

Triggering genome duplication in the lab can fairly easily done by chemicals (http://www.funpecrp.com.br/gmr/year2006 ... mr0232.pdf). Yet the process itself has not been (to my knowledge) studied in any detail.

Question: Can genome duplication be triggered by extensive diversification?

P.S. This can be tested in the lab on plants and flies (should you be working with those).