Similarity analysis between species of the genus Quercus L. (Fagaceae) in southern Italy based on the fractal dimension

Musarella, Carmelo Maria; Cano-Ortíz, Ana; Fuentes, José Carlos Piñar; Navas-Ureña, Juan; Gomes, Carlos José Pinto; Quinto-Canas, Ricardo; Cano, Eusébio; Spampinato, Giovanni

doi:10.3897/phytokeys.113.30330

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…In this study, no groups of morphological and molecular diversity and no combination of diagnostic characters were found to identify the putative species reported to dominate the study sites, such as Q. dalechampii, Q. pubescens and Q. virgiliana (Biondi et al 2004;Di Pietro and Misano 2009). Indeed, a more recent study using fractal analysis applied to the leaves of Calabrian deciduous oaks (Musarella et al 2018) was also unable to distinguish different species inside the Q. pubescens group.…”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 98%

“…have been published in the last decade for Southern Europe. Some of them were primarily based on the analysis of morphological characters, but also involved geometric morphometric analyses (Viscosi and Fortini 2011), micro-morphological leaf traits (Scareli-Santos et al 2007;Fortini et al 2009;Panahi et al 2012;Scareli-Santos et al 2013), fractal analysis of leaf morphology (Musarella et al 2018), and molecular data (Curtu et al 2007a(Curtu et al , b, 2015. As far as southern Italy is concerned, two recent papers (Di Pietro et al 2016, 2020 analysed 24 south-eastern Italian populations of pubescent oaks from a macromorphological and molecular standpoint.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A multivariate morphometric analysis of diagnostic traits in southern Italy and Sicily pubescent oaks

et al. 2020

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Species identification within the species complex of Q. pubescens is a well-known taxonomic challenge among European botanists. Some of the specific pubescent oak binomials currently accepted in various European floras and checklists were originally described in Sicily and southern Calabria. As a consequence, several species belonging to the pubescent oaks group (Q. pubescens, Q. amplifolia, Q. congesta, Q. dalechampii, Q. leptobalana and Q. virgiliana) are reported in the taxonomic and phytosociological literature. To verify whether it was possible to associate a diverse set of morphological characters with each of these different taxa, thirteen natural populations of pubescent oak from Sicily and southern Calabria were sampled. A total of 391 trees, 3,887 leaves and 1,047 fruits were collected. Overall, 28 morphological characters of oak leaves and fruits were statistically analysed using univariate and multivariate procedures. The results showed that neither the groups of morphological diversity identified by cluster analysis, nor those obtained by our expert identification through the use of analytical keys, matched with the current taxonomical frameworks as proposed by the most recent floras and checklists. Nearly all of the morphological characters considered displayed a more or less continuous trend of variation, both within and among populations. In the light of these findings it seems unlikely that more than one biological species of pubescent oak occurs in Sicily and southern Calabria.

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Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A multivariate morphometric analysis of diagnostic traits in southern Italy and Sicily pubescent oaks

et al. 2020

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“…The goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between leaf area and leaf shape, particularly the extent to which leaf laminae manifest bilateral asymmetry. The rationale for this study rests on the fact that leaf shape is closely associated with the expansion of the leaf lamina [1], the development of leaf venation patterns [2][3][4], and, to a limited extent, maximum photosynthetic rates [5][6][7], which are hard to measure on a large scale by direct physiological methods in the field. Therefore, indirect indices are needed to represent the growth and development features of leaves.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scaling Relationships between Leaf Shape and Area of 12 Rosaceae Species

Hui

Sandhu

et al. 2019

Symmetry

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Leaf surface area (A) and leaf shape have been demonstrated to be closely correlated with photosynthetic rates. The scaling relationship between leaf biomass (both dry weight and fresh weight) and A has been widely studied. However, few studies have focused on the scaling relationship between leaf shape and A. Here, using more than 3600 leaves from 12 Rosaceae species, we examined the relationships of the leaf-shape indices including the left to right side leaf surface area ratio (AR), the ratio of leaf perimeter to leaf surface area (RPA), and the ratio of leaf width to length (RWL) versus A. We also tested whether there is a scaling relationship between leaf dry weight and A, and between PRA and A. There was no significant correlation between AR and A for each of the 12 species. Leaf area was also found to be independent of RWL because leaf width remained proportional to leaf length across the 12 species. However, there was a negative correlation between RPA and A. The scaling relationship between RPA and A held for each species, and the estimated scaling exponent of RPA versus A approached −1/2; the scaling relationship between leaf dry weight and A also held for each species, and 11 out of the 12 estimated scaling exponents of leaf dry weight versus A were greater than unity. Our results indicated that leaf surface area has a strong scaling relationship with leaf perimeter and also with leaf dry weight but has no relationship with leaf symmetry or RWL. Additionally, our results showed that leaf dry weight per unit area, which is usually associated with the photosynthetic capacity of plants, increases with an increasing A because the scaling exponent of leaf dry weight versus A is greater than unity. This suggests that a large leaf surface area requires more dry mass input to support the physical structure of the leaf.

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“…Undoubtedly, the availability of global-scale bioclimatic variables [36] and the introduction of novel statistical techniques can help to shed new light to ecological and biological phenomena [37]. Yet, the study of morphology remains a key-instrument in plant systematics and ecology, both with traditional approaches [38][39][40] or with modern geometric morphometrics [41][42][43].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Intricate Morphometric Variability with Environmental Predictors: The Case of Globularia cordifolia Species Complex

Innangi

Friščić

Pilepić

et al. 2020

Plants

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Globularia is a genus of small evergreen and perennial shrubs that are widespread in Europe. Globularia section Empetron includes a group of three species, G. cordifolia, G. meridionalis, and G. neapolitana, that have been taxonomically disputed for more than 150 years. Many morphological features have been proposed to discriminate these species. Nevertheless, evidence from both past and recent literature suggest that these differences among species are not consistent. In order to shed new light in this long-disputed group, we investigated 10 populations of the G. cordifolia species complex with both classical and geometric morphometrics and used environmental predictors in multivariate regression to explain patterns of variation. Our results showed that bract area and calyx teeth length are correlated with solar radiation and annual precipitation, whereas leaf dry mass per unit area can be explained by temperature seasonality. Leaf shape can be explained by temperature seasonality as well, although with a lower amount of explanatory and predictive power. Despite a comparatively low sample size in terms of populations, our results were based on a large number of individuals and were supported by a robust statistical approach. We can conclude that differences among the three species of Globularia could be related to the combined effects of several ecological variables and might not have taxonomical value. Our novel approach provided an ecological interpretation on a species complex that makes up a continuum of forms within the environmental framework of the Mediterranean basin.

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Similarity analysis between species of the genus Quercus L. (Fagaceae) in southern Italy based on the fractal dimension

Cited by 25 publications

References 44 publications

A multivariate morphometric analysis of diagnostic traits in southern Italy and Sicily pubescent oaks

A multivariate morphometric analysis of diagnostic traits in southern Italy and Sicily pubescent oaks

Scaling Relationships between Leaf Shape and Area of 12 Rosaceae Species

Explaining Intricate Morphometric Variability with Environmental Predictors: The Case of Globularia cordifolia Species Complex

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