Abstract
Vegetative characters are widely used in the taxonomy of
the amphibious genus Elatine L. However, these usually show great
variation not just between species but between their aquatic and terrestrial
forms. In the present study we examine the variation of seed and vegetative
characters in nine Elatine species (E. brachysperma, E. californica,
E. gussonei, E. hexandra, E. hungarica, E. hydropiper, E. macropoda, E.
orthosperma and E. triandra) to reveal the extension of plasticity
induced by the amphibious environment, and to test character reliability for
species identification. Cultivated plant clones were kept under controlled
conditions exposed to either aquatic or terrestrial environmental conditions.
Six vegetative characters (length of stem, length of internodium, length of
lamina, width of lamina, length of petioles, length of pedicel) and four seed
characters (curvature, number of pits / lateral row, 1st and 2nd dimension)
were measured on 50 fruiting stems of the aquatic and on 50 stems of the
terrestrial form of the same clone. MDA, NPMANOVA Random Forest classification
and cluster analysis were used to unravel the morphological differences between
aquatic and terrestrial forms. The results ofMDA cross-validated and Random
Forest classification clearly indicated that only seed traits are stable within
species (i.e., different forms of the same species keep similar morphology).
Consequently, only seed morphology is valuable for taxonomic purposes since
vegetative traits are highly influenced by environmental factors.
Hivatkozás:
Molnár V.
A, Tóth J. P., Sramkó G., Horváth O., Popiela A., Mesterházy A., Lukács
B. A. (2015): Flood induced phenotypic plasticity in amphibious genus Elatine (Elatinaceae). – PeerJ 3:e1473; DOI 10.7717/peerj.1473
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