Aplicació de la taxonomia integrativa per la delimitació de noves espècies. Un exemple dins el grup Rhaponticum

Abstract

The Rhaponticum group includes, among others, the old genus Leuzea and for a long time it has been difficult to define taxonomic relationships between the species. The taxonomy of Rhaponticum coniferum, R. berardioides and R. font-queri is unclear. In addition, in 2011 it was collected a population in the Middle Atlas (Morocco) with some morphological characteristics that differentiate it from R. coniferum. In this study we implemented the use of integrative taxonomy using morphological and molecular methods to clarify the relationships of the old genus Leuzea. Twenty-eight morphological characters in 112 individual herbarium vouchers have been examined. For the molecular study the nuclear region ETS (External Transcribed Spacer) was chosen and several individuals of each taxa were cloned. The three species previously described are morphologically different. Genetically, R. berardioides clearly separates of others. In terms of the problem population, it has its own morphological characters, but is genetically very close to R. coniferum. In our taxonomic proposal we suggest to keep R. coniferum, R. berardioides and R. font-queri as three different species, and to subordinate the problem population as a subspecies of R. coniferum