Innangi Michele, Friščić Maja, Hazler Pilepić Kroata, Danise Tiziana, Conti Fabio, Bartolucci Fabrizio, Fioretto Antonietta, Peruzzi Lorenzo
Department of Environmental, Biological, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Technologies, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Via Vivaldi 43, 81100 Caserta, Italy.
Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb, Schrottova 39, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
Plants (Basel). 2020 Mar 3;9(3):314. doi: 10.3390/plants9030314.
is a genus of small evergreen and perennial shrubs that are widespread in Europe. section includes a group of three species, , , and , that have been taxonomically disputed for more than 150 years. Many morphological features have been proposed to discriminate these species. Nevertheless, evidence from both past and recent literature suggest that these differences among species are not consistent. In order to shed new light in this long-disputed group, we investigated 10 populations of the species complex with both classical and geometric morphometrics and used environmental predictors in multivariate regression to explain patterns of variation. Our results showed that bract area and calyx teeth length are correlated with solar radiation and annual precipitation, whereas leaf dry mass per unit area can be explained by temperature seasonality. Leaf shape can be explained by temperature seasonality as well, although with a lower amount of explanatory and predictive power. Despite a comparatively low sample size in terms of populations, our results were based on a large number of individuals and were supported by a robust statistical approach. We can conclude that differences among the three species of could be related to the combined effects of several ecological variables and might not have taxonomical value. Our novel approach provided an ecological interpretation on a species complex that makes up a continuum of forms within the environmental framework of the Mediterranean basin.
是一类分布于欧洲的小型常绿多年生灌木。某组包括三个物种，即[物种名称1]、[物种名称2]和[物种名称3]，它们在分类学上存在争议已超过150年。人们提出了许多形态特征来区分这些物种。然而，过去和近期文献的证据表明，这些物种之间的差异并不一致。为了给这个长期存在争议的类群带来新的认识，我们用经典形态测量学和几何形态测量学研究了该物种复合体的10个种群，并在多元回归中使用环境预测因子来解释变异模式。我们的结果表明，苞片面积和萼齿长度与太阳辐射和年降水量相关，而单位面积叶干质量可由温度季节性来解释。叶形也可由温度季节性来解释，尽管解释力和预测力较低。尽管就种群而言样本量相对较小，但我们的结果基于大量个体，并得到了稳健统计方法的支持。我们可以得出结论，该复合体中三个物种之间的差异可能与几个生态变量的综合作用有关，可能没有分类学价值。我们的新方法为一个物种复合体提供了一种生态学解释，该复合体在地中海盆地的环境框架内构成了一个连续的形态系列。
