Abstracts, XIV OPTIMA Meeting, Palermo (Italy) , 9-15

XIV OPTIMA Meeting, Palermo (Italy), 9-15 September 2013
Evolution and biogeography of the Campanula drabifolia species complex
(Campanulaceae) in the eastern Mediterranean
CROWL A. 1 , NHON L. 2 , WU H.-H. 2 , MANSION G. 3 , HAND R. 3 , ÖZHATAY N. 4 , CELLINESE N. 1, 2
1 Department of Biology, University of Florida, USA. E-mail: ncellinese@flmnh.ufl.edu
2 Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, USA.
3 Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum, Berlin-Dahlem, Germany.
4 Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, University of Istanbul, Turkey.
The drabifolia complex (also known as Roucela) is a group of 12, mostly narrow endemic,
Campanula species found primarily in the Aegean Archipelago. Little is known about the evolution of
endemic Campanulaceae on these continental islands. This region has a complex climatic and geologic
history with numerous sea-level changes and tectonic events causing connections and disconnections
between islands and the mainland across time. Additionally, the Mid-Aegean Trench, which formed
approximately 9 mya, separates the archipelago into the Eastern and Western Aegean. We use both
plastid and nuclear loci and recovered a grade composed exclusively of taxa found east of the Mid-
Aegean Trench and a clade that includes primarily taxa found west of the trench. Our results indicate
that the Mid-Aegean Trench is historically significant in the evolutionary history of this group. Dating
analyses found the drabifolia clade to be much older than predicted by often made claims that speciation
in the Mediterranean is largely recent and driven by the onset of the Mediterranean climate. The
break-up of the Aegean landmass played a significant role in the diversification of the clades found in
the eastern side of the trench, while the Messinian Salinity Crisis may have contributed to the divergence
within the clade occurring in the western side of the trench. However, we will also discuss in
more details individual species histories and some relatively recent migration events from mainland to
islands. We will be showing preliminary results from niche-based models to corroborate our hypotheses
of geologic events, dispersal barriers, and climatic variables being responsible for species current
distributions.
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