TY - JOUR

T1 - Low genetic differentiation between apotheciate Usnea florida and sorediate Usnea subfloridana (Parmeliaceae, Ascomycota) based on microsatellite data

AU - Degtjarenko, Polina

AU - Mark, Kristiina

AU - Moisejevs, Rolands

AU - Himelbrant, Dmitry

AU - Stepanchikova, Irina

AU - Tsurykau, Andrei

AU - Randlane, Tiina

AU - Scheidegger, Christoph

N1 - Funding Information: This research was supported by the Estonian Research Council (grant PUT1017 to TR), the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship for Foreign Scholars 2018/2019 to PD, and the institutional research project ‘Flora of lichens and bryophytes of Russia and phytogeographically important regions’ (no. АААА-А19-119020690077-4 to IS & DH ). We also are grateful to the Genetic Diversity Centre ( ETH Zurich , Switzerland) for technical assistance; to Liis Marmor, Tiiu Tõrra, Tiina Mandel, Andres Saag, Dace Stepanova, Dana Krasnopoļska, Aivars Dunskis and Arvīds Barševskis for help during fieldwork; to Dace Sāmīte (Nature Conservation Agency, Latvia) and Helmuts Hofmanis for providing the access to the Moricsala Strict Nature reserve; to Rasmus Puusepp ( University of Tartu , Estonia), Sabine Fink ( WSL , Switzerland) and Veronika Zengerer ( WSL , Switzerland) for support with laboratory work; to Tuuli Reisberg and Lauri Saag ( University of Tartu , Estonia) for support with microsatellite genotyping; to Kristiina Kübarsepp ( University of Tartu , Estonia) and Nina Pagani ( ETH Zurich , Switzerland) for help with thin-layer chromatography; to Andres Saag ( University of Tartu , Estonia) and Māris Nitcis (Daugavpils University, Latvia) for the help with several figures; to Triin Wood ( European Commission ) for linguistic review of manuscript; to Kerry Knudsen ( Czech University of Life Sciences Prague , Czech Republic) for the proofreading of manuscript; to Elisa Lagostina (Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Fankfurt, Germany), Jessica Allen ( Eastern Washington University , USA ), Andrin Gross ( WSL , Switzerland), Markus Schlegel ( WSL , Switzerland), Meixia Yang ( WSL , Switzerland), Carolina Cornejo ( WSL , Switzerland) and Benjamin Dauphin ( WSL , Switzerland) for various support and discussions during research; to anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 British Mycological Society Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2020/10

Y1 - 2020/10

N2 - Accurate species delimitation has a pivotal role in conservation biology, and it is especially important for threatened species where decisions have political and economic consequences. Finding and applying appropriate character sets and analytical tools to resolve interspecific relationships remains challenging in lichenized fungi. The main aim of our study was to re-assess the species boundaries between Usnea subfloridana and Usnea florida, which have been phylogenetically indistinguishable until now, but are different in reproductive mode and ecological preferences, using fungal-specific simple sequence repeats (SSR), i.e. microsatellite markers. Bayesian clustering analysis, discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC), minimal spanning network (MSN), and principal component analysis (PCA) failed to separate U. florida and U. subfloridana populations. However, a low significant differentiation between the two taxa was observed across all populations according to AMOVA results. Also, analysis of shared haplotypes and statistical difference in clonal diversity (M) supported the present-day isolation between the apotheciate U. florida and predominantly sorediate U. subfloridana. Our results do not provide a clear support either for the separation of species in this pair or the synonymization of U. florida and U. subfloridana. We suggest that genome-wide data could help resolve the taxonomic question in this species pair.

AB - Accurate species delimitation has a pivotal role in conservation biology, and it is especially important for threatened species where decisions have political and economic consequences. Finding and applying appropriate character sets and analytical tools to resolve interspecific relationships remains challenging in lichenized fungi. The main aim of our study was to re-assess the species boundaries between Usnea subfloridana and Usnea florida, which have been phylogenetically indistinguishable until now, but are different in reproductive mode and ecological preferences, using fungal-specific simple sequence repeats (SSR), i.e. microsatellite markers. Bayesian clustering analysis, discriminant analysis of principal components (DAPC), minimal spanning network (MSN), and principal component analysis (PCA) failed to separate U. florida and U. subfloridana populations. However, a low significant differentiation between the two taxa was observed across all populations according to AMOVA results. Also, analysis of shared haplotypes and statistical difference in clonal diversity (M) supported the present-day isolation between the apotheciate U. florida and predominantly sorediate U. subfloridana. Our results do not provide a clear support either for the separation of species in this pair or the synonymization of U. florida and U. subfloridana. We suggest that genome-wide data could help resolve the taxonomic question in this species pair.

KW - Conservation, Speciation process

KW - Lichenized fungi

KW - Lichens

KW - Species boundaries

KW - Species pair

KW - BETA-TUBULIN

KW - DELIMITATION

KW - SEQUENCES

KW - LOBARIA-PULMONARIA

KW - GENUS USNEA

KW - SPECIES PAIR CONCEPT

KW - PHYLOGENETIC-RELATIONSHIPS

KW - LICHENIZED FUNGI

KW - POPULATION-STRUCTURE

KW - DIVERSITY

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089253229&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/d3b26432-b804-3122-adf5-91c50b5a48c2/

U2 - 10.1016/j.funbio.2020.07.007

DO - 10.1016/j.funbio.2020.07.007

M3 - Article

C2 - 32948277

AN - SCOPUS:85089253229

VL - 124

SP - 892

EP - 902

JO - Fungal Biology

JF - Fungal Biology

SN - 1878-6146

IS - 10

ER -