Format: ORAL

Antonio Giac1, Andrea Coppi2, Ludovica Fittipaldi2, Mario Pentassuglia1, Lorenzo Peruzzi1

1 Department of biology, University of Pisa, Italy 2 Department of biology, University of Firenze, Italy

Centaurea L., with approximately 600 species, is one of the largest genera of the Mediterranean Region. Due to this species richness and several biological phenomena (hybridization, introgression, polyploidy, etc), the systematic and taxonomic investigation of this genus is highly challenging. In the central Mediterranean, one of the groups still waiting for a thorough taxonomic revision is that of C. aplolepa Moretti. This species is endemic to north-western Italy and, during the last century, a great number of taxa at intraspecific rank was described. Currently, based on qualitative morphological and ecological (e.g., different growing substrate) observations, ten putative subspecies are accepted. Previous phylogenetic studies using ITS and the rpl chloroplast region failed to disentangle the relations within C. aplolepa. Indeed, its subspecies were all placed in an unresolved clade along with several other central Mediterranean morphologically related species. To understand the systematic relations among the subspecies of C. aplolepa and other closely related taxa, we started an integrated taxonomic investigation. During summer 2023, 17 populations of C. aplolepa and eight populations belonging to five related and geographically contiguous species were sampled. For each population, 30 individuals were collected for morphometric analyses. A subset of 15 individuals was used to extract DNA for population genetics using AFLP; cypselae were collected for cytotaxonomic studies (chromosome count and genome size estimation). The taxonomic investigation is currently ongoing, but preliminary morphometric results support the distinction of C. aplolepa with respect to the related species. Conversely, just three (instead of ten) morphological groups are supported within C. aplolepa.