Species delimitation within Campomanesia (Myrtaceae) using morphology and amplification profiles of microsatellite markers

Abstract

Campomanesia is a well-circumscribed genus within Myrtaceae, but the boundaries among some of its species remain poorly understood. Microsatellite amplification profiles have proven useful DNA fingerprinting for plant species identification, but have never been applied to the taxonomy of this genus. Here we studied 12 species of Campomanesia, including a set of related and non-related species, as well as species with doubtful boundaries. Forty-eight morphological characters and 50 primers were used to test the species. A cluster analysis followed by a group sharpness test and a heat map analysis was performed with both sets of data. A regression tree was constructed using only on the molecular data. Seven groups based on morphological characters and five groups based on molecular characters were revealed by cluster analysis and the sharpness group test. The microsatellite amplification profiles were efficient at distinguishing the studied species, despite the smaller number of distinct groups formed by this marker compared with the morphological data. Among the 50 primers included, 13 were informative for species distinction, and 10 were indicated by the regression tree to species identification. Microsatellite amplification profiles proved to be an informative tool for the taxonomy of Campomanesia.

Pollen morphology: a source of information for taxonomic studies within Campomanesia (Myrtaceae)

“…Campomanesia eugenioides differs from the other species studied here by the smaller size of its pollen grains. This species also shared fewer gene regions compared to other Campomanesia species studied by Luber et al (2020). In this way, pollen morphology seems to corroborate molecular data.…”

“…Campomanesia guazumifolia was previously reported as a close relative of C. schlechtendaliana, based on morphological and molecular data (Luber et al 2017(Luber et al , 2020. In the present study, however, these species could be easily distinguished based on pollen morphology, which includes pollen grains with medium size and thicker exine in C. guazumifolia.…”

“…Brevisyncolporate pollen grains with a granulate or verrucose exine is the main pattern presented by the ancestral lineages of the tribe Myrteae (Thornhill et al 2012b), to which the subtribe Pimentinae belongs. Also, it is interesting to note that species reported as closely related (Oliveira et al 2012;Luber et al 2017Luber et al , 2020, have the same type of colpus. For example, C. laurifolia and C. sepalifolia are colporate, as well as C. guazumifolia, C. schlechtendalia and C. ilhoensis.…”

Development and Characterization of 15 Novel Genomic SSRs for Viburnum farreri

“…The resulting polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products can then be sized to determine the polymorphisms and therefore, alleles of specific loci. As a result of these properties, SSRs are frequently used to investigate genetic diversity [ 28 , 29 ] and delimit species and subspecies [ 30 , 31 ].…”