XXIII Conference-Expedition of the Baltic Botanists „SEMINATURAL COMMUNITIES“ Haapsalu, ESTONIA, 19. – 22. July 2010 Morphological polymorphism of Primula farinosa L. (Primulaceae) populations in natural and semi-natural habitats in Lithuania and Latvia Sigitas Juzėnas, Edita Meškauskaitė, Jonas Remigijus Naujalis Department of Botany and Genetics, Vilnius University, Lithuania e-mail: edita.meskauskaite@gf.vu.lt Introduction Primula farinosa L. (Figure 1) is a postglacial relic, distributed in Europe from central Sweden to cen- tral Spain and Bulgaria, protected in many European countries. This plant has decreased strongly in abundance during the last century. Typical habitats of P. farinosa are calcareous fens but often new populations of this protected plant are formed in semi natural biotopes, i.e., at the approach of melioration ditches, etc. Material and methods Research on the P. farinosa population genetic and morphological polymorphism has been accomplished in nine populations in Lithuania and Latvia during 2007-2009 (Figure 2): Natural habitats - Engure (E), Gudmoniškė (G), Kanieris (K), Velėnija (V), Pandėlys (P); Semi natural habitats ¬ Abava (A), Alukėnai (AL), Dabikinėlė (D), Jauniūnai (J); In all sites the plant communities were described according to Braun-Blanquet method. P. farinosa populations, which cover a larger area, were described in the three sample plots, smaller - in the one sample plot. Here are presented results of the research on the P. fa- rinosa morphological polymorphism. The main criteria for evaluation of P. farinosa generative individuals were length (LSc) of longest scape, number of flowers (NFl) and leaves (NLe), diameter of rosette (DRo), length (LLLe) and width (WLLv) of the largest leaf. Statistical ecological and morphological data analysis was performed using a computer program PAST (Hammer et al., 2001). Ecology Non metric multidimensional scaling (nmMDS) and Jaccard index (Figure 3) were em- ployed to compare plant communities with P. farinosa. It has been obtained that group- ing of plant communities is almost clearly reflecting the origin from previously quali- fied natural and semi-natural habitats, except plant communities from habitat near Pandelis, previously qualified as natural. It has showed no clear differences with plant communities from semi natural habitats. It may be influenced by the small size of habi- tat and no natural buffer dividing from bordering anthropogenic habitats. Pandelis was assigned to another group - semi natural habitats. One-way ANOSIM was performed using Jaccard index to test differences in plant com- munities grouped into natural and semi natural groups. Statistically significant differ- ences (R=0,676, p<0,005 (permutation N=10000) have been obtain between this two groups of plant communities. Morphology According to the studied morphological features only some P. farinosa populations differ statistically reliably among themselves. Using Mantel test no spatial structure was found in morphological features of plants within and between populations. Mor- phological polymorphism does not depend on geographic distances between popula- tions and individuals. These results differ from our colleagues obtained genetic data - all studied P. farinosa populations are distinguished by genetic peculiarity and great ge- netic differentiation is characteristic to them (Meškauskaitė et al.,2009). Principal component analysis (PCA) (Figure 4) showed what plant size (first component) determines variation of approximately 69,41 % of studied P. farinosa morphological fea- tures. Second component showed negative correlation between size of biggest leaf, di- ameter of rosette and length of scapes, number of flowers and leaves. Our results con- firm existence of strong positive correlation between scape length and count of ma- tured capsules (r= 0,642, p<0,001). In all population was not found evidence of short- scaped morph, all P. farinosa individuals were long-scaped. References Hammer, Ø., Harper, D.A.T. and Ryan P.D. 2001. PAST: Paleontological Statistics Software Package for Education and Data Analysis. Palaeontologia Electronica vol. 4, issue 1, art. 4: 9pp. Meškauskaitė, E., Naujalis, J. R., Žvingila, D., Juzėnas, J. Primula farinosa L. morphological and genetic polymorphism. Scientific Conference "Development trends of ecosystems and populations filogeography molecular studies in the Baltic region" (Vilnius University Institute of Ecology) 2009 11 27 Acknowledgements This research was supported by the Lithuanian State Science and Studies Foundation. We also thank Žemaitijos National Park, Kamanų Reserve, Ķemeri National Park administra- tions for assistance in organizing field studies. (Figure 3) (Figure 2) (Figure 1) Results G1 G2 G3 V1 V2 V3 P1 P2 P3 K1 K2 K3 E1 E2 E3 A1 A2 J1 J2 J3 AL D -0,3 -0,2 -0,1 0 0,1 0,2 Coo r din a t e 1 -0,2 -0,1 0 0,1 0,2 0,3 Coo r din a t e 2 Jaccard index Non metric multidimensional scaling (nmMDS) (Figure 4) Dro LLLe WLLe LSc NFl Nle -2 -1 1 2 3 4 Component 1 -2 -1 1 2 3 Component 2 Principal component analysis (PCA) -0,25 -0,28 -0,47 0,33 0,69 0,48 Dro LLLe WLLe LSc NFl Nle -0,5 -0,4 -0,3 -0,2 -0,1 0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 Correlation PCA loadings Component 2