Genome size constancy in Antarctic populations of Colobanthus quitensis and Deschampsia antarctica
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SHORT NOTE
Genome size constancy in Antarctic populations of Colobanthus quitensis and Deschampsia antarctica Joan Pere Pascual‑Díaz1 · Sedat Serçe2 · Ivana Hradecká1 · Martin Vanek1 · Bahar Soğutmaz Özdemir3 · Nusrat Sultana2,4 · Mehtap Vural2 · Daniel Vitales1 · Sònia Garcia1 Received: 18 February 2020 / Revised: 11 June 2020 / Accepted: 15 June 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Colobanthus quitensis (Kunth) Bartl. and Deschampsia antarctica Desv., the only two native flowering plants in the Antarctica, are interesting study cases from the ecological, biogeographic, and evolutionary points of view. Here, we present the first genome size analysis focused in several populations from the Antarctic Peninsula and the surrounding islands for both species, with a broad sampling distributed along a distance of 800 km. We have used flow cytometry to estimate genome size, being the first time that this technique is used for D. antarctica. Average genome sizes for D. antarctica (2C = 10.63 pg) and C. quintesis (2C = 2.01 pg) are consistent with the scarce previous data available, and point to a diploid and tetraploid ploidy level, respectively, for the analysed taxa. Despite a certain deviating individual in D. antarctica, whose higher genome size could suggest the existence of B-chromosomes, no significant genome size differences were found amongst the populations studied, for both species, which might be related with the recent colonisation history of the Antarctic continent. Keywords Antarctic peninsula · C-value · Flow cytometry · Genome size · Nuclear DNA content
Introduction The vegetation in the Antarctica is currently composed of several cryptogamic plants (e.g. mosses, liverworts, lichens, algae; Peat et al. 2007) and two autochthonous flowering plants, the Poaceae species Deschampsia antarctica Desv. and the Caryophyllaceae species Colobanthus quitensis (Kunth) Bartl. (Cavieres et al. 2016). The conditions are too cold and dry to sustain most vascular plants, but both species have evolved adaptations to the extreme wind, low temperatures, severe drought, high salinity concentrations and
* Daniel Vitales [email protected] * Sònia Garcia [email protected] 1
Institut Botànic de Barcelona (IBB, CSIC-Ajuntament de Barcelona), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
2
Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Technologies, Niğde Ömer Halisdemir University, Niğde, Turkey
3
Faculty of Engineering, Yeditepe University, İstanbul, Turkey
4
Faculty of Life and Earth Sciences, Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
high levels of UV radiations (Lewis-Smith 2003; Bravo et al. 2009). These plants are found in the Maritime Antarctic, including the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula and the sub-Antarctic islands (Alberdi et al. 2002; Parnikoza et al. 2007). Additionally, both are present in the Tierra de Fuego and in the Andes, in South America (Moore 1970; van de Wouw et al. 2007). Researchers have documented increases in population growths of C. quitensis a
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