|
|
Evolutionary processes responsible for complexity in aquatic vascular plants
Prančl, Jan ; Kaplan, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Oberprieler, Christoph (referee) ; Štech, Milan (referee)
Aquatic plants are a heterogeneous assemblage of species that, although surviving in similar habitats, have evolved from very different genetic and ecological backgrounds. However, many aquatics share a number of anatomical, morphological, metabolic and reproductive adaptations, which have arisen independently in remarkable similarities (through convergence and parallelisms) in many unrelated groups. Despite their evolutionary uniqueness, aquatic plants are markedly underrepresented in contemporary biosystematic studies. Moreover, the taxonomic evaluation of numerous aquatic plant groups is intricate due to the strong morphological reduction and a high degree of phenotypic plasticity. This thesis focuses on two notoriously challenging aquatic plant groups, Callitriche and Ranunculus sect. Batrachium. The combination of several approaches (genome size estimation, chromosome counting, sequencing of nrDNA ITS and plastid trnT-trnL regions, examination of herbarium collections) was applied in order to improve our knowledge on principal evolutionary processes such as hybridization, polyploidization and cryptic variation and demonstrate their role on the shaping of overall aquatic plant diversity. The distribution of particular species in the Czech Republic was mapped for the first time. For both groups,...
|
guest ::
RSS feed.