TY  - JOUR
A1  - Paule, Juraj
A1  - Dunkel, Franz G.
A1  - Schmidt, Marco
A1  - Gregor, Thomas
T1  - Climatic differentiation in polyploid apomictic Ranunculus auricomus complex in Europe
T2  - BMC ecology
N2  - Background: Polyploidy and apomixis are important factors influencing plant distributions often resulting in range shifts, expansions and geographical parthenogenesis. We used the Ranunculus auricomus complex as a model to asses if the past and present distribution and climatic preferences were determined by these phenomena.
Results: Ecological differentiation among diploids and polyploids was tested by comparing the sets of climatic variables and distribution modelling using 191 novel ploidy estimations and 561 literature data. Significant differences in relative genome size on the diploid level were recorded between the “auricomus” and “cassubicus” groups and several new diploid occurrences were found in Slovenia and Hungary. The current distribution of diploids overlapped with the modelled paleodistribution (22 kyr BP), except Austria and the Carpathians, which are proposed to be colonized later on from refugia in the Balkans. Current and historical presence of diploids from the R. auricomus complex is suggested also for the foothills of the Caucasus. Based on comparisons of the climatic preferences polyploids from the R. auricomus complex occupy slightly drier and colder habitats than the diploids.
Conclusions: The change of reproductive mode and selection due to competition with the diploid ancestors may have facilitated the establishment of polyploids within the R. auricomus complex in environments slightly cooler and drier, than those tolerated by diploid ancestors. Much broader distribution of polyploid apomicts may have been achieved due to faster colonization mediated by uniparental reproductive system.
KW  - Apomixis
KW  - Chromosome number
KW  - Distribution
KW  - Flow cytometry
KW  - Ploidy
KW  - Postglacial colonization
KW  - Relic area
KW  - Species distribution modelling
KW  - Ranunculaceae
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/48448
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-484481
SN  - 1472-6785
N1  - Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
VL  - 18
IS  - 1, Art. 16
SP  - 1
EP  - 12
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -