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.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dominik Roman Letz for help with plant collection, to Ladislav Pekárik and Marek Šlenker (all Bratislava) for help with the statistical analyses. We thank the curators of the LJU, ZA, and ZAHO herbaria for allowing us to study the herbarium specimens. This study was supported by the Grant Agency of Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic and Slovak Academy of Sciences VEGA (Grant No. 2/0131/16).
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This study was funded by Vedecká Grantová Agentúra MŠVVaŠ SR a SAV (VEGA 2/0131/16) to Iva Hodálová.
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Online Resource 1. Regions in Slovenia and Croatia from where S. sadleriana or its hybrids/intermediate types with/to other Sesleria taxa have been reported, and classification of Sesleria sect. Sesleria populations from these regions according to relevant publications.
Online Resource 2. Mitotic chromosomes of Sesleria species.
Online Resource 3. Histograms of fuorescence intensity in simultaneous analyses of DAPI-stained nuclei isolated from several Sesleria individuals.
Online Resource 4. 2C relative genome sizes (in arbitrary units; a.u.) of the Central European representatives of the genus Sesleria.
Online Resource 5. Mean predicted values and 95% confidence intervals from linear mixed models for relative genome size of selected Sesleria species/populations.
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Hodálová, I., Mártonfiová, L., Skokanová, K. et al. The utility of genome size in plant identification: a case study on Sesleria (Poaceae) from Croatia and Slovenia. Plant Syst Evol 306, 87 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-020-01715-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-020-01715-2