Geographical differentiation of Dryas octopetala in Europe based on morphological features

Abstract

Abstract:Dryas octopetala is an important arctic alpine species, but its morphological analyses are scarce. The study deals with present European biogeographical structure based on morphology and its relations to the phylogenetic structure and the climate. Characters of leaves from 23 isolated populations were measured, statistically characterized and analyzed with the use of ANOVA and the discriminant analysis. All the features differentiated the tested samples significantly. Differences between plants representing regions were greater than between the samples within regions with regard to the four characters. The most visible division ran between the samples coming from the southern and the northern parts of the range, with the sample from the Western Scandinavia occupying the central position. Correlations between characters and climactic factors were shown, and the size of the leaf was associated mainly with the minimum temperatures of spring months, while the leaf shape with the rainfall during the summer months. Characters differentiating the regions and discriminating populations strongly were mostly dependent on the influence of the climate. The results of the present study were not fully consistent with the outcomes of the biogeographic molecular analyses of the researched species. Some parallels can be drawn when comparing the present analyses with the geographic differentiation of two other arctic-alpine shrubs Salix herbacea and S. reticulata. Although morphological diversity of Dryas octopetala showed a geographic structure, it was most probably shaped mainly by the influence of the environmental and climatic factors.

Taxonomic differentiation of Salix retusa agg. (Salicaceae) based on leaf characteristics

“…1B) and a further 7 resulting from calculations (Table 2). The leaf characteristics were chosen based on previous studies on the variation of S. herbacea L., S. reticulata L. and Dryas octopetala L. (Marcysiak, 2012a(Marcysiak, , 2012b(Marcysiak, , 2014 and from diagnoses of S. retusa group taxa (Pawłowski, 1956;Rechinger, 1957Rechinger, , 1974Dostál, 1989;Koblížek, 2006). The measurement procedure follows those described by Jasińska et al (2015) with implementation of WinFolia Pro 2003 (Regent Instruments Inc.) software.…”

Plant morphological variability at the distribution edges: the case of Dryas octopetala (Rosaceae) in northern Greece

“…climatic, soil/geological) or natural selection and a potentially different post-glacial history might have shaped this morphological differentiation. Dryas octopetala exclusively occurs in sites with limestone, the Greek populations being no exception (Strid 1986;Schuler & Tsiripidis 2009;Marcysiak 2014). On-site examination showed that D. octopetala occurs in Greece above 1900 m in rocky micro-sites of northern or northwestern exposure (see Appendix), where competition with other plant groups (e.g.…”

“…Leaf morphology is widely considered as a group of trait variables from which biogeographical information and species evolution can be deduced (Klingenberg 2010;Dkhar & Pareek 2014;Marcysiak 2014;Tian & al. 2016;Lai & al.…”

“…This is because leaves are essential parts of the adaptation of a species to a given ecological niche, and such information can be expressed through a number of leaf morphological traits. A previous study demonstrated that both leaf size and leaf shape of Dryas octopetala L. (Rosaceae) follow a biogeographical pattern (Marcysiak 2014). Specifically, it was found that D. octopetala populations are clustered into several distinct groups, in which the leaf morphological traits (e.g.…”

“…The fact that the Greek populations of D. octopetala have been fragmented and isolated for a long time (maybe for several centuries or even millennia) makes them an ideal case to study their morphological differentiation or divergence. Based on this background, the aim of the present study is to examine whether there are leaf morphological differences between individuals from the three Greek populations, and if any differentiation could be explained by the biogeographical patterns identified by Marcysiak (2014).…”