Morphometric and Climatic Analysis of the Lomatium dissectum/multifidum Species Complex

AUTHOR: Ian Clifford
FACULTY: Dr. Don Mansfield
DEPARTMENT: Biology (Retired)

ABSTRACT

The Perennial Endemic North American (PENA) clade in the flowering plant family Apiaceae is one of the largest clades in the American west. Within the clade, Lomatium is one of the most diverse genera. Recent research has found that existing species names in these genera often conceal multiple species, as was the case with L. ravenii and L. bentonitum (Carlson et al 2011). Due to high levels of intraspecific variation in the L. dissectum/multifidum species complex, the research goal is to discern whether there are additional species nested within these names (George et al 2014). In this research, we aim to assess species boundaries by analyzing morphological and climate-niche variation among populations within the species complex. For the morphometric analysis, 28 morphological characters (e.g. leaflet length, bract length) were measured on 107 plant specimens in the Harold M. Tucker Herbarium at the College of Idaho and various herbaria across the Pacific Northwest. For the climate mapping component, I obtained geographical coordinates for each of the 107 plant populations and mapped them with WORLDCLIM's 19 bioclimatic variables to discern the climatic niche each population occupies. For both the morphometric and the climate data, Principal Coordinates Analyses were run using RStudio software. Both morphometric and climatic analyses support the existence of two different species in this complex – L. dissectum and L. multifidum. The results will be compared to preliminary phylogenetic analyses of DNA sequence data performed in our collaborators' lab at Boise State University.

MEDIA

Recognizing Multiple Lomatium Species Using Morphologic, Geographic, and Climatic Data (.pdf file)