Assessing Phenotypic Variability in Some Eastern European Insular Populations of the Climatic Relict Ilex aquifolium L.

Abstract

Through its natural or cultivated insular population distribution, Ilex aquifolium L. is a paramount species which is exceptionally suitable for studying phenotypic variability and plasticity through the assessment of morphological, physiological, biochemical and genomic features with respect to acclimation and/or adaptation efficiency. The current study is focused on four insular populations of Ilex aquifolium from Eastern Europe (i.e., in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria), and presents an initial evaluation of phenotypic variability in order to conclude our research on phylogenetic relationships and phytochemical profiles, including several descriptive and quantitative morphological traits. Taken together, the data from different methods in this paper indicate that the Bulgarian and Romanian populations can be distinguished from each other and from Serbian and Hungarian populations, while the latter show a higher level of resemblance with regards to their quantitative morphological traits. It is likely that these morphological traits are determined through some quantitative trait loci implicated in stress responses generated by light, temperature, soil water, soil fertility and salinity conditions that will need to be analysed in terms of their physiological, genomic and metabolomics traits in future studies.

The genome sequence of the English holly, Ilex aquifolium L. (Aquifoliaceae)

“…We sampled a female individual from a native stand at Petersham Common in Surrey, where it grows in mixed woodland with Acer campestre L., Carpinus betulus L. and Quercus robur L. As with the genome of the Chinese Ilex micrococca Maxim. ( Yao et al , 2022 ), the genome of Ilex aquifolium will be equally useful for population genetic studies, especially related to studying phenotypic variation in glacial refuges across the range of this species ( Mihali et al , 2022 ). We hope that this high-quality genome will be useful for furthering the studies on population genetics, epigenetics and domestication in Aquifoliaceae.…”