Format: ORAL

Giulia Albani Rocchetti1, Thomas Abeli1, Ana Isabel D. Correia2, David Draper2, Eric Gouda3, Isabel Marques2, Lorenzo Peruzzi4, Fred Stauffer5, Manuel Tiburtini4,Gonzalo Nieto Feliner6, Salvatore Tomasello7

1 Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy 2 Universtity of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal 3 Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands 4 University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy 5 Conservatoire et jardin botaniques (CJB), Chambésy, Switzerland 6 Real Jardín Botánico (RJB), CSIC, Madrid, Spain 7 Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany

Herbaria play fundamental roles in many fields, including plant taxonomy, systematics, and conservation biology. In this framework, Herbariomics offers invaluable -and sometimes unique- opportunities to obtain data that can inform species conservation. While investigating extinct plant species in Europe, we found at the Utrecht Botanical Garden a living specimen labelled as Armeria arcuata Welw. ex Boiss. Reut., a species endemic to Portugal assessed as extinct (EX). After many years in cultivation, the specimens morphological characteristics changed making a correct identification difficult. To unequivocally identify the accession of A. arcuata from Utrecht, we compared its DNA with herbarium and fresh material from type material and other related Armeria species. We collected and analysed samples of A. arcuata from the living specimen at Utrecht and three ancient herbarium specimens (including type materials, ca. 1848; G, LISU herbaria), A. neglecta, also extinct, from the type specimen (1882; COI), A. caespitosa from recent herbarium specimens (2003-2009; JBAG, HSS), A; A. pinifolia (1970; GOET), A. pungens (1997; GOET), and A. curvifolia (living; Teplice Botanic Garden). We applied DNA extraction techniques suitable for old herbarium material, along with adaptation of the normal double-stranded library preparation protocols. Genome skimming was performed on a lane of a NovaSeq sequencer, which allowed us to gather about four Gb of sequence information per sample. After quality trimming of the received reads, we performed reference-based assembly of plastomes and of the nrDNA region (about 12,000 bp long) and inferred phylogenetic tree and networks. Results from the phylogenetic analyses indicate that the plants cultivated in Utrecht are not actually A. arcuata. Moreover, network analyses suggest a hybrid origin of these cultivated plants.