MURAKAMI, NORIAKI*, YOKO YATABE, TAKESHI SUZUKI, AND NORIO SAHASHI. Department of Botany, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, JAPAN. - High level of intraspecific variation of rbcL sequences and molecular systematics of the Old World Ophioglossaceae
.
Some species of Ophioglossaceae, such as Ophioglossum
petiolatum, O. thermale and Ophioderma pendula have
very simple gross morphology, and all are widely distributed in the
Old World. Several different biological species might be contained in
these species due to the lack of good taxonomic characters. In this
work, we made detailed analysis of the intraspecific rbcL
sequence variation of the above three species from various localities.
Although rbcL is known as a slowly evolving gene, we found
large amount of variation in all the three species. We will also
discuss interspecific phylogeny of the Ophioglossaceae based on the
same sequence data.
Key words: intraspecific variation,molecular phylogeny,Ophioglossum,pteridophyte,rbcL