Authors: Dmitar Lakušić Tamara Rakić Saša Stefanović Boštjan Surina Vladimir Stevanović
Publish Date: 2009/04/08
Volume: 280, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 77-88
Abstract
The genus Edraianthus ADC has a center of distribution in the Balkans and it is one of the most prominent groups of endemic plants in this region During our recent fieldtrip to Mt Lovćen Montenegro putative hybrid individuals were encountered morphologically intermediate between two sympatric taxa E tenuifolius E sect Edraianthus and E wettsteinii subsp lovcenicus E sect Uniflori Multivariate morphometric and molecular analyses were carried out to investigate the occurrence of hybridization between these two species As a result a new nothospecies is described here Edraianthus × lakusicii V Stevanović D Lakušić a natural hybrid between E tenuifolius and E wettsteinii subsp lovcenicus At present this hybrid is known only from the single locality of Mt Lovćen Its population size is estimated to be 50 mature individuals and the estimated “area of occupancy” is smaller than 1 km2We thank Gordana Kasom and Zlatko Bulić Institute for Nature Protection Podgorica Montenegro for their help in the field investigation Maria Kuzmina Department of Biology University of Toronto Mississauga Canada and Peter Schönswetter and Gerald Schneeweiss Department of Biogeography and Botanical Garden Faculty Centre Botany University of Vienna Austria for their help with sequencing AFLP fingerprinting and for molecular analyses Sonja ŠiljakJakovljev Olivier Catrice Department of Biodiversity Systematics and Evolution University of ParisSud France Maja Tomašević Faculty of Biology University of Belgrade Serbia for their kind cession of the part of their unpublished data about genome size of genus Edraianthus Critical comments from Karol Marhold as well as anonymous reviewers further improved the presentation of our results Investigation was supported by grants of Ministry for Sciences and Natural Protection of Serbia No 143015 European Union Marie Curie Grant MEIFCT2005024315 as well as by the NSERC of Canada grant 32643906 to Saša Stefanović
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