Adil GÜNER, Vehbi ESER - optima

Posters
TESTING THE ORIGINS AND RELATIONSHIPS OF THE BALKAN
SERPENTINE ENDEMICS IN ONOSMA (BORAGINACEAE): INSIGHTS
FROM nrDNA ITS SEQUENCE DATA
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Lorenzo CECCHI & Federico SELVI
Dipartimento di Biologia Vegetale dell’Università, Via La Pira 4, I-50121 Firenze, Italy
tasmaceto@gmail.com;selvi@unifi.it
Plant adaptation to serpentine soils is an ideal system for studies in evolutionary ecology and
satisfies key requirements for addressing mechanistic questions of adaptive evolution in nature.
Differential adaptation of closely related plants to serpentine and “normal” soil is
phylogenetically and geographically widespread, having evolved independently in different
parts of the world and angiosperm groups. The large genus Onosma L. of Boraginaceae tribe
Lithospermeae is one such groups, including several serpentine endemic and tolerant taxa
especially in Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean. At least seven obligate endemics
originated on distinct outcrops of the Balkans: O. elegantissima, O. pygmaea, O. stridii, O.
euboica, O. kittanae and O. bulgarica, plus O. troodi from the ultramafics of Cyprus. In
addition, four species are facultative serpentinophytes that can grow also on other basic Mgrich
substrates, such as calcareous-dolomitic rocks. This condition offers an ideal system to test
the evolutionary dynamics of serpentine adaptation in a complex of narrow-ranged and
allopatric “island” endemics sharing the same edaphic specialization in the ecologically
discontinuous habitat of the southern Balkans. Does serpentine adaptation in this group
represent a shared charater associated with phylogenetic affinity or did it evolved in unrelated
lineages through parallel processes of adaptive evolution under the strong pressure imposed by
soil anomalies? Molecular markers and a phylogenetic approach were used to bring light on
this point ad to open a window on the still unknown relationships in Onosma.
Keywords: Boraginaceae, molecular phylogeny, Onosma, serpentine adaptation
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