Flood induced phenotypic plasticity in amphibious genus Elatine (Elatinaceae)

Vegetative characters are widely used in the taxonomy of the amphibious genus Elatine L. However, these usually show great variation not just between species but between their aquatic and terrestrial forms. In the present study we examine the variation of seed and vegetative characters in nine Elati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PeerJ (San Francisco, CA) CA), 2015-12, Vol.3, p.e1473-e1473, Article e1473
Main Authors: Molnár V, Attila, Tóth, János Pál, Sramkó, Gábor, Horváth, Orsolya, Popiela, Agnieszka, Mesterházy, Attila, Lukács, Balázs András
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Aquatic plants
Botany
Classification
Controlled conditions
Cultivation experiments
Ecology
Elatinaceae
Elatine ambigua
Elatine hungarica
Elatine triandra
Environmental conditions
Environmental factors
Evolution
Flowers & plants
Fruits
Macrophyte
Morphology
Phenotypic plasticity
Physiology
Plant ecology
Plant Science
Plant sciences
Seed characters
Seed-morphology
Seeds
Species
Stems
Studies
Taxonomy
Trends
Vegetative characteristics
Wetlands
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Summary:Vegetative characters are widely used in the taxonomy of the amphibious genus Elatine L. However, these usually show great variation not just between species but between their aquatic and terrestrial forms. In the present study we examine the variation of seed and vegetative characters in nine Elatine species (E. brachysperma, E. californica, E. gussonei, E. hexandra, E. hungarica, E. hydropiper, E. macropoda, E. orthosperma and E. triandra) to reveal the extension of plasticity induced by the amphibious environment, and to test character reliability for species identification. Cultivated plant clones were kept under controlled conditions exposed to either aquatic or terrestrial environmental conditions. Six vegetative characters (length of stem, length of internodium, length of lamina, width of lamina, length of petioles, length of pedicel) and four seed characters (curvature, number of pits / lateral row, 1st and 2nd dimension) were measured on 50 fruiting stems of the aquatic and on 50 stems of the terrestrial form of the same clone. MDA, NPMANOVA Random Forest classification and cluster analysis were used to unravel the morphological differences between aquatic and terrestrial forms. The results of MDA cross-validated and Random Forest classification clearly indicated that only seed traits are stable within species (i.e., different forms of the same species keep similar morphology). Consequently, only seed morphology is valuable for taxonomic purposes since vegetative traits are highly influenced by environmental factors.
ISSN:2167-8359
2167-8359
DOI:10.7717/peerj.1473