Genetic Diversity of Aquatic Ranunculus (Batrachium, Ranunculaceae) in One River Basin Caused by Hybridization

Abstract

Aquatic Ranunculus (sect. Batrachium) include homophyllous and heterophyllous plants. The development of floating leaves may be induced by genetic mechanisms or/and environmental conditions and this fact complicates the morphologically based identification of species. DNA-based studies provide the opportunity to expand the knowledge of this complicated group. We studied heterophyllous Ranunculus with well-developed capillary and intermediate leaves and visually homophyllous plants with capillary leaves from a single river basin, with the aim to evaluate their genetic polymorphism and taxonomic status—whether the plants with well-developed and weakly expressed intermediate leaves belong to different forms (taxa) or if they just express morphological variation of one or two taxa in a specific, very variable river environment. The studied heterophyllous and homophyllous plants from different rivers showed high genetic differentiation and a low level of genetic diversity within these groups. The molecular analysis did not reveal any inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) polymorphism associated with the development of intermediate leaves. An analysis of nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacers ITS1–2 sequences revealed several ribotypes, which indicated the genetic heterogeneity of studied plants and indirectly confirmed the hybrid origin of some of them. Sterile plants originated from crossing of R. circinatus and R. penicillatus were discovered in the Skroblus River; however, identification of the parental species was impeded by the polymorphism detected. For this reason, cytological studies were performed and allowed confirmation of the hybrid origin of these plants.

Extensive hybridization in Ranunculus section Batrachium (Ranunculaceae) in rivers of two postglacial landscapes of East Europe

“…1 ). Such taxa composition differs from the previously known diversity recorded for this group in Lithuania 15 , 41 – 44 .…”

“…Cook 6 , 14 assumed all members of Batrachium to be potentially capable of hybridization, which is supported by recent studies 1 , 4 , 5 , 15 . Batrachium hybrids can be partly or fully fertile 1 , 3 – 6 , 14 , 16 , which can have important evolutionary implications for the reticulate evolution of the group.…”

Relationship Between Genetic and Environmental Characteristics of Lithuanian Populations of Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum Salicaria)

“…(Vyšniauskienė et al, 2018), Batrachium sp. (Butkuvienė et al, 2020), and Phragmites australis (Naugžemys et al, 2021). As far as we are aware, our study represents the first examination of the genetic diversity of the L. salicaria along Lithuania.…”

“…In most cases Lithuanian populations of macrophytes examined using ISSR (Vyšniauskienė et al, 2018;Butkuvienė et al, 2020) or SSR markers (Kupcinskiene et al, 2013;Anderson et al, 2018;Vyšniauskienė et al, 2018;Naugžemys et al, 2021). Despite explored for woody species (Frercks et al, 2014), AFLP markers have never been employed for Lithuanian herbaceous plants, at the same time for riparian vegetation.…”

ISSR-Based Genetic Diversity Assessment of Genus Jasminum L. (Oleaceae) from Pakistan

“…A diversity analysis of Jasminum was also performed on the collected variants using ISSR markers, which showed the intraspecific and interspecific variations and the relationship among the sections. Many studies have validated the use of ISSR markers for genomic characterization in the Oleaceae family [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ] and many other plants, such as Batrachium [ 27 ], Pistacia [ 28 ], and Aerva [ 29 ].…”