The utility of genome size in plant identification: a case study on Sesleria (Poaceae) from Croatia and Slovenia
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The utility of genome size in plant identification: a case study on Sesleria (Poaceae) from Croatia and Slovenia Iva Hodálová1 · Lenka Mártonfiová2 · Katarína Skokanová1 · Monika Majerová1 · Lajos Somlyay3 · Pavol Mereďa Jr.1 Received: 1 April 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Members of the genus Sesleria are important vegetation elements and are regarded as diagnostic or constant species in many plant communities. However, their identification is often problematic due to their similar morphology and phenotypic plasticity. Although the genus has been studied by many specialists, numerous taxonomic problems remain unresolved. A controversial issue is the alleged presence of S. sadleriana and its hybrid with S. kalnikensis in Slovenia and NW Croatia. To resolve the situation, we used flow cytometry and determined the relative genome size in a large set of Sesleria samples, because this marker proved to be an effective tool in species identification in our previous Sesleria study. A total of 287 individuals from 24 Sesleria populations from NE Italy, Slovenia and NW Croatia were analysed in this study, and the results were compared with our previous dataset comprising 717 samples (representing 57 populations) of Sesleria species collected in other parts of Central Europe (Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania). We have revealed that none of the studied populations from Slovenia or Croatia could be assigned to S. sadleriana or the hybrid S. kalnikensis × S. sadleriana. Of the 24 populations, 5 were identified as octoploid S. juncifolia, 3 as octoploid S. kalnikensis s.s., 11 as octoploid S. kalnikensis s.l., and 5 as an unknown tetraploid populations. The identity of S. kalnikensis s.l. and tetraploid populations requires further studies. Keywords Balkan Peninsula · Central Europe · DNA content · Flow cytometry · Taxonomy
Introduction
Handling Editor: Ivana Rešetnik. Contribution to “Plants of the Balkan Peninsula in Space and Time”. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-020-01715-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Sesleria Scop. (Poaceae, Poeae, Seslerieae) is a small grass genus with approximately 40 taxa of an almost exclusively European distribution (Deyl 1946, 1980; Strgar 1981; Kuzmanović et al. 2017). Kuzmanović et al. (2017) classified the genus into two sections and several informal groups based on amplified fragment length polymorphism analyses (AFLP groups): (1) S. section Argentea Deyl, including the
* Pavol Mereďa Jr. [email protected]
Lajos Somlyay [email protected]
Iva Hodálová [email protected]
1
Lenka Mártonfiová [email protected]
Plant Science and Biodiversity Centre, Institute of Botany, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 84523 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
2
Katarína Skokanová [email protected]
Pavol Jozef Šafárik University
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