Unknown sides of Utricularia (Lentibulariaceae) diversity in East Europe and North Asia or how hybridization explained old taxonomical puzzles

Abstract

Most of Utricularia taxa in temperate Eurasia are poorly distinguished by vegetative characters, while flowering is rare in some of them. Thus, we aimed to clarify the taxonomy and distribution of temperate Eurasian Utricularia. We supplemented the existing results of intensive morphological and genetic studies of Utricularia mainly from West and Central Europe with our data from East Europe and North Asia. We combined molecular barcoding (nuclear ITS and plastid rps16 regions) and fingerprinting (ISSR) techniques (74 collection localities) with morphological analysis of herbarium collections (more than 1800 specimens from 16 herbaria) and numerous natural populations with a special focus on hardly accessible Siberian and Far Eastern regions of Russia.

We demonstrated that temperate Eurasian Utricularia taxa could be easily discriminated with barcoding approach if the hybridization is taken into account. Genetic and morphological variation of U. macrorhiza in comparison with U. vulgaris supported the treatment of the former as a separate species. We have revealed U. tenuicaulis previously treated as fertile lineage of U. australis and its sterile hybrid with U. macrorhiza (U. × japonica) in the Russian Far East and the latter additionally in southwestern East Siberia, outside their known distribution. For the first time we evidenced hybridization between U. tenuicaulis and U. vulgaris. The sterile hybrid (U. × neglecta) is widely distributed in Europe and West Siberia. In the Northern Hemisphere, plants initially referred to as sterile U. australis represent in fact U. × japonica and U. × neglecta, and the name U. australis should not be applied to any of them. Utricularia ochroleuca and U. stygia represent a complex of sterile forms with continuous morphological variation (U. × ochroleuca) originated from hybridization between U. intermedia and U. minor. Almost forgotten Japanese species U. multispinosa appeared to be sister to all temperate Eurasian species, and it was revealed for the first time in the southern Russian Far East. We have refined the distributions of Utricularia species in East Europe and North Asia and have shown that extant areas of U. macrorhiza and U. vulgaris are explained by the temperature regime – an important insight in context of global climate change.