Astragalus molybdenus s.l. (Leguminosae): Higher Taxonomic Relationships and Identity of Constituent Species

Phylogenetic relationships among New MexicoAstragalus mollissimusvarieties andOxytropisspecies by restriction fragment analysis

“…Interestingly, although the spotted loco used in this study was collected from Utah, the plant also occurs in western New Mexico. Lavin and Marriott (1997) also found that highly phylogenetically related Leadville milkvetch varieties clustered geographically. Inconsistent with the single cluster of A. mollissimus var.…”

“…Variation of 2.98 to 9.27% within the ITS (internal transcribed spacer regions) region was reported between species of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) group (Delgado-Salinas et al 1999). Intraspecific cpDNA variation is generally less than interspecific variation with a range of 0.026% for bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) cpDNA (Banks and Birky 1985) and 0.23% for the rpoC and IR Ϫ regions of beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) (Asmussen and Liston 1998) to a high of 1.5 to 2.0% for Leadville milkvetch (Astragalus molybdenus) (Lavin and Marriott 1997).…”

“…About 500 of these generally perennial species are found in Western North America, primarily in desert regions (Barneby 1964;Welsh 1978). Morphological, biochemical, and molecular characters of Astragalus species found in North America have defined the species as monophyletic with differentiation in distinct sections (Lavin and Marriott 1997;Liston 1992a;Luo et al 2000;Sanderson 1991;Wojciechowski et al 1999). Comparison of the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) of Astragalus using restriction analyses of the chloroplast (cp) genome (Sanderson and Doyle 1993) and restriction site analyses of polymerase chain reaction-amplified (PCR-amplified) sequences of cp RNA polymerase C1 (rpoC1) and RNA polymerase C2 (rpoC2) genes (Liston 1992b;Liston and Wheeler 1994) have better defined the sections of the genus and shown the utility of the cp genes rpoC1 and rpoC2 to characterize and differentiate species of Astragalus.…”

The use of seed proteins as revealed by SDS-PAGE in the taxonomy of some Astragalus species (Fabaceae)

“…This fact promoted number of scholars to more studies through different disciplines. These studies comprised Cladistic analysis (Lavin andMarriott 1997 andWojciechowski et al, 1999), orthodox taxonomy (Valesecchi, 1994;Liston et al, 1997 andPodlech andAytac, 1998), anatomy (Sukhova, 1990;Engel, 1992;Kandemir et al, 1996;Zarrinkamar, 1996), cytology (Cartier, 1979;Liston, 1990;Dopchiz et al, 1995) and morphology of pollen grains (Saad andTaia, 1988 andAbou -El-Naga andRizk, 1997). Podlech (1983) concluded that only two subgenera of Astragalus, can be maintained.…”