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Posters
178
ANCESTRALITY OR MORPHOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE IN THE
MOLLISSIMA AND ITALICA GROUPS OF SILENE IN THE
WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN BASIN.
Yamama NACIRI 1 , Honor C. PRENTICE 2 , Angelo TROIA 3 , Laeticia HUGOT 4 , Concetta
BURGARELLA 5 , Daniel JEANMONOD 1 ,
1Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques, Laboratoire de Systématique Végétale et Biodiversité, Geneva, Switzerland
Yamama.Naciri@ville-ge.ch; Daniel.Jeanmonod@ville-ge.ch
2 Lund University, Department of Ecology, Lund, Sweden
Honor_C.Prentice@ekol.lu.se
3 Università degli Studi di Palermo, Dipartimento di Scienze Botaniche, Palerm, Italy
angelo.troia@libero.it
4 Conservatoire Botanique de la Corse, Office National de Corse, Corte, France
hugot@oec.fr
5 Spanish National Institute for Food and Agriculture Research, Center of Forest Research, Madrid, Spain
burgarella.concetta@inia.es
The ‘mollissima’ group of Silene is comprised of seven species, and is related to the ‘italica’
group which contains eight species. The ‘mollissima’ species display a slow-growing pattern
and woody stocks, they share a similar ecology and exclusively inhabit rocky substrates and
cliffs, often close to the sea. Most of them are endemics, some of which occur on the Western
Mediterranean islands. The ‘italica’ species are more widely distributed over the Western
Mediterranean region, and most of them are continental. All the species in both groups are
perennial and monoecious. The two groups have been described as distinct, on a
morphological and ecological basis. Using more than four hundred sequence data from two
chloroplast markers (trnH-psbA and trnS-trnG) and one nuclear gene (ITS) on fresh material
or herbarium specimens, we challenge the hypothesis that each of the two groups is
monophyletic and that they were both derived, about 5 million years ago, from an ancestor of
Silene italica, now found in South-Europe and the Middle-East. Our results clearly indicate
that species of the two groups are interrelated and suggest a completely different evolutionary
scenario for speciation and adaptation.
Keywords: speciation, adaptation, phylogeography, chloroplast and ITS sequences,
Caryophyllaceae.
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