Geographic distribution of Pellia spp. (hepaticae, metzgeriales) in Poland based on electrophoretic identification

Abstract

Many species of liverworts (Hepaticae) are morphologically plastic to such an extent that their proper recognition may cause difficulties even for a specialist. Central European species of the genus Pellia are notorious in this respect. Searching for less malleable diagnostic characters (than morphological and/or anatomical ones) we showed recently that the electrophoretic phenotypes (obtained by means of separation of enzyme proteins on starch gels) can be used for reliable identification of Pellia species with much reliability. During the last 20 years we performed electrophoretic identification of over 500 (exactly 541) colonies and discovered that at least two of the "classic" species of the genus Pellia are in fact species complexes comprising taxa having the character of sibling species. In this paper we have mapped all stations of electrophoretically identified Pellia species, including the sibling species mentioned; marked differences in their geographical distributions are discussed. Our work clearly shows that using more natural taxa (i.e.genetically defined sibling species instead of weakly characterised species complexes) in bryogeography, one can obtain meaningful results even in a geographically restricted area as, for instance in Poland.