Karol Marhold

Plant Science and Biodiversity Centre, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava & Charles University, Prague

• Contact zones between diploids and their autopolyploid descendants represent a unique evolutionary venue for studying polyploid establishment, cytotype coexistence, and interactions. Here, we examine cytotype coexistence in a diploid-tetraploid contact zone of a perennial herb, Cardamine amara, located north of the Alps by assessing cytotype spat...

Database of published chromosome numbers and ploidy-level estimates of the tribe Alysseae is presented, together with the revised generic concept and the list of accepted names, to reflect the most recent taxonomic and phylogenetic studies in Alysseae. It is available on-line at www.alysseae.sav.sk. The tribe encompasses 24 genera and 277 species....

Quaternary climatic oscillations profoundly impacted temperate biodiversity. For many diverse yet undersampled areas, however, the consequences of this impact are still poorly known. In Europe, particular uncertainty surrounds the role of Balkans, a major hotspot of European diversity, in postglacial recolonization of more northerly areas, and the...

The notion of species as reproductively isolated units related through a bifurcating tree implies that gene trees should generally agree with the species tree and that sister taxa should not share polymorphisms unless they diverged recently and should be equally closely related to outgroups. It is now possible to evaluate this model systematically....

Recurrent polyploid formation and weak reproductive barriers between independent polyploid lineages generate intricate species complexes with high diversity and reticulate evolutionary history. Uncovering the evolutionary processes that formed their present-day cytotypic and genetic structure is a challenging task. We studied the species complex of...

Great progress in cytotaxonomic research during the last decades indicated an importance of relationships between morphological features, geographical distribution of plants, and chromosome counts. This study is aimed to fill the gaps in our knowledge on Bolboschoenus chromosome numbers related to morphological differentiation of plants and their d...

Polyploidy, the result of whole genome duplication (WGD), is widespread across the tree of life and is often associated with speciation and adaptability. It is thought that adaptation in autopolyploids (within-species polyploids) may be facilitated by increased access to genetic variation. This variation may be sourced from gene flow with sister di...

Polyploidisation is a significant reproductive barrier, yet genetic evidence indicates that interploidy admixture is more common than previously thought. Theoretical models and controlled crosses support the 'triploid bridge' hypothesis supposing that hybrids of intermediate ploidy facilitate gene flow. However, comprehensive evidence combining exp...

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a pan-European Research Infrastructure (RI) initiative. DiSSCo aims to bring together natural science collections from 175 museums, botanical gardens, universities and research institutes across 23 countries in a distributed infrastructure that makes these collections physically and digit...

Anatolia is a significant centre of biodiversity and endemism with diversity hotspots located mainly in mountain ranges. Its complex geological history and heterogeneous topography have generated natural barriers to gene flow that favour speciation, and migration corridors that accentuate its transitional biogeographic position. While more attentio...

For the first time, the number of chromosomes was determined for 5 species of genus Pyrus L. (Rosaceae) from Armenia, viz. P. daralaghezii Mulk., P. hyrcana Fed. var. yeghegisi Akopian, P. medvedevii Rutzov, P. oxiprion Woronow, P. takhtajianii Fed., and the previous count of chromosomes number for P. caucasica Fed. was confirmed. All the explored...

Elucidating the evolution of recently diverged and polyploid-rich plant lineages may be challenging even with high-throughput sequencing, both for biological reasons and bioinformatic difficulties. Here, we apply target enrichment with genome skimming (Hyb-Seq) to unravel the evolutionary history of the Alyssum montanum-A. repens species complex. R...

Background and Aims Southwestern Asia is a significant centre of biodiversity and a cradle of diversification for many plant groups, especially xerophytic elements. In contrast, little is known about the evolution and diversification of hygrophytic flora. To fill this gap, we focus on Cardamine (Brassicaceae) species that grow in wetlands over a wi...

Polyploidy, the result of whole genome duplication (WGD), is widespread across the tree of life and is often associated with speciation or adaptability. It is thought that adaptation in autopolyploids (within-species polyploids) may be facilitated by increased access to genetic variation. This variation may be sourced from gene flow with sister dip...

Background and Aims A targeted enrichment NGS approach was used to construct the phylogeny of Amomum Roxb. (Zingiberaceae). Phylogenies based on hundreds of nuclear genes, the whole plastome and the rDNA cistron were compared with an ITS-based phylogeny. Trends in genome size (GS) evolution were examined, chromosomes were counted and the geographic...

Aim Although whole-genome duplication (WGD) is an important speciation force, we still lack a consensus on the role of niche differentiation in polyploid evolution. In addition, the role of genome doubling per se vs. later divergence on polyploid niche evolution remains obscure. One reason for this might be that the intraspecific genetic structure...

The package MorphoTools2 is intended for multivariate analyses of morphological data. Commonly used tools are missing or scattered across several R packages. The new package, in order to make the workflow convenient and fast, wraps available statistical and graphical tools and provides a comprehensive framework for checking and manipulating input d...

Aim Although whole genome duplication (WGD) is an important speciation force, we still lack a consensus on the role of niche differentiation in polyploid evolution. In addition, the role of genome doubling per se vs. later divergence on polyploid’s niche evolution remains obscure. One reason for this might be that the intraspecific genetic structur...

Background and Aims Reproductive isolation and local establishment are necessary for plant speciation. Polyploidy, possession of more than two complete chromosome sets, creates a strong postzygotic reproductive barrier between diploid and tetraploid cytotypes. However, this barrier weakens between polyploids, e.g., tetraploids and hexaploids. Repro...

The Balkan Peninsula, and the territory of Greece in particular, is a significant biodiversity hotspot in the Mediterranean that is rich in endemic plants. The focal species of this study, Cardamine barbaraeoides, is a narrow Greek endemic that has been confused taxonomically since its original description. Based on a detailed multivariate morphome...

Mountains of the Balkan Peninsula are significant biodiversity hotspots with great species richness and a large proportion of narrow endemics. Processes that have driven the evolution of the rich Balkan mountain flora, however, are still insufficiently explored and understood. Here we focus on a group of Cardamine (Brassicaceae) perennials growing...

Parallel evolution provides powerful natural experiments for studying repeatability of evolution and genomic basis of adaptation. Well-documented examples from plants are, however, still rare, as are inquiries of mechanisms driving convergence in some traits while divergence in others. Arabidopsis arenosa, a predominantly foothill species with scat...

PREMISE: Whole genome duplication is a major evolutionary event, but its role in ecological divergence remains equivocal. When populations of different ploidy (cytotypes) overlap in space, “contact zones” are formed, allowing the study of evolutionary mechanisms contributing toward ploidy divergence. Multiple contact zones per species’ range are of...

This paper summarises data on altogether 25 localities of Cardamine occulta, an Eastern Asian alien, recognized for the first time in the Czech Republic in 2016. After a targeted search in herbaria, the date of the first occurrence of this species on the Czech territory had to be shifted to 2006. However, the first finds come from garden shops wher...

Correction to: Plant Systematics and Evolution

Parallel evolution provides powerful natural experiments for studying repeatability of evolution. Well-documented examples from plants are, however, still rare, as are inquiries of mechanisms driving convergence in some traits while divergence in others. Arabidopsis arenosa, a predominantly foothill species with scattered morphologically distinct a...

Phenological responses in species of Cardamine are often accompanied by morphological changes that result in disagreement among researchers about the taxonomic rank and status of a particular taxon. The gross morphology of two closely related eastern Asian species, Cardamine fallax (O. E. Schulz) Nakai and C. occulta Hornem., was compared by growin...

It is known that the allopolyploid genome of different species of the genus Elymus L. (Poaceae: Triticeae) is formed by at least five haploms of different origin (Dewey, 1984; Löve, 1984; Mason-Gamer & al., 2010). Earlier in the study of sequences of the nuclear gene encoding the enzyme granule bound starch synthase I (GBSSI), we obtained data that...

Evolutionary histories of plants from the mid-elevation (montane) zone of European mountain ranges have only rarely been documented, standing in contrast to those of well-researched inhabitants of (sub-)alpine and foothill zones. To fill this gap, we have reconstructed the phylogeography of Arabidopsis halleri, a species preferring coniferous woodl...

Evolutionary histories of plants from the mid-elevation (montane) zone of European mountain ranges have only rarely been documented, standing in contrast to those of well-researched inhabitants of (sub-)alpine and foothill zones. To fill this gap, we have reconstructed the phylogeography of Arabidopsis halleri, a species preferring coniferous woodl...

Premise: Disjunct distributions have been commonly observed in mountain plant species and have stimulated phylogeographic and phylogenetic research. Here we studied Alyssum repens, a member of the polyploid species complex A. montanum-A. repens, which exhibits SE Alpine-Carpathian disjunctions with a large elevational span and consists of diploid...

Background and aims: Cardamine occulta (Brassicaceae) is an octoploid weedy species (2n = 8x = 64) originated in Eastern Asia. It has been introduced to other continents including Europe and considered to be an invasive species. Despite its wide distribution, the polyploid origin of C. occulta remained unexplored. The feasibility of comparative ch...

Background and aims: Polyploidy is an important driver of plant diversification and adaptation to novel environments. As a consequence of genome doubling, polyploids often exhibit greater colonizing ability or occupy a wider ecological niche than diploids. Although elevation has been traditionally considered as a key driver structuring ploidy vari...

Alyssum cuneifolium has been recognized as a perennial alpine species growing in five isolated European mountain ranges: the Pyrenees, Western Alps, Apennines, Pirin Mts and Mt Smolikas. Recent molecular systematic studies revealed that the disjunct populations from distant mountains are not closely related and belong to five independent species: A...

No official abstract: nomenclatural proposal to conserve the generic name Meniocus Desv. (Brassicaceae/Cruciferae) with a conserved type, M. linifolius (Stephan ex Willd.) DC. The original Free Access text and PDF are available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tax.12007

This study shows how polyploidy impacts population genomics and the evolutionary potential of polyploids in natural populations of the diploid-autotetraploid Arabidopsis arenosa. Ploidy-variable species allow direct inference of the effects of chromosome copy number on fundamental evolutionary processes. While an abundance of theoretical work sugge...

Cardamine occulta is an Asian weedy species rediscovered as a separate taxon only twelve years ago, but introduced to all continents including Europe. In Europe it usually occurs in two types of habitats, on lake shores and in greenings, flowerpots and flowerbeds. Few records are known so far from Slovakia, all from garden centers, greenhouses, flo...

These data base treats the Appendices I-VII of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (Shenzhen Code). It is online at: < https://naturalhistory2.si.edu/botany/codes-proposals/>

The genus Cardamine is distributed worldwide and is rich in polyploids. Here we review the considerable amount of knowledge accumulated on polyploid species and related diploids over the last twenty years, particularly in the Mediterranean area and neighbouring regions of Central Europe. These studies addressed the taxonomic treatment of polyploids...