An updated inventory of the vascular flora alien to Italy, providing details on the occurrence at regional level, is presented. The checklist includes 1597 species, subspecies, and hybrids, distributed in 725 genera and 152 families; 2 taxa are lycophytes, 11 ferns and fern allies, 33 gymnosperms, and 1551 angiosperms. 157 taxa are archaeophytes and 1440 neophytes. The alien taxa currently established in Italy are 791 (570 naturalized and 221 invasive), while 705 taxa are casual aliens, 4 are not assessed, 7 are of unknown regional distribution, 47 have not been confirmed in recent times, 3 are considered extinct or possibly extinct in the country, and 40 are doubtfully occurring in Italy. This checklist allows to establish an up-to-date number (9792) of taxa constituting the whole (native and alien) Italian flora.

/pdf/an-updated-checklist-of-the-vascular-flora-native-to-italy-2tuf9mb3d4.pdf

An updated checklist of the vascular flora native to Italy

An annotated checklist of the italian vascular flora: nomenclatural sources

One of the most popular, cheap and widely used approaches in comparative cytogenetics – especially by botanists – is that concerning intrachromosomal and interchromosomal karyotype asymmetry. Currently, there is no clear indication of which method, among the many different ones reported in literature, is the most adequate to infer karyotype asymmetry (especially intrachromosomal), above all in view of the criticisms recently moved to the most recent proposal published. This work addresses a critical review of the methods so far proposed for estimation of karyotype asymmetry, using both artificial and real chromosome datasets. It is shown once again how the concept karyotype of asymmetry is composed by two kinds of estimation: interchromosomal and intrachromosomal asymmetries. For the first one, the use of Coefficient of Variation of Chromosome Length, a powerful statistical parameter, is here confirmed. For the second one, the most appropriate parameter is the new Mean Centromeric Asymmetry, where Centromeric Asymmetry for each chromosome in a complement is easily obtained by calculating the difference of relative lengths of long arm and short arm. The Coefficient of Variation of Centromeric Index, strongly criticized in recent literature, is an additional karyological parameter, not properly connected with karyotype asymmetry. This shows definitively what and how to measure to correctly infer karyotype asymmetry, by proposing to couple two already known parameters in a new way. Hopefully, it will be the basic future reference for all those scientists dealing with cytotaxonomy.

/pdf/karyotype-asymmetry-again-how-to-measure-and-what-to-measure-y1u4xg5m3m.pdf

Karyotype asymmetry: again, how to measure and what to measure?

For the purpose of the present study we considered as Italian endemics those specific and subspecific taxa occurring in Italy that are not found elsewhere with the exception of Corsica (France) and Malta. This study presents an updated list of the endemic taxa in the Italian flora, including their geographical distribution at regional level. Italy is characterized by 1371 endemic species and subspecies (18.9% of the total vascular flora): three taxa belong to Lycopodiidae, one to Polypodiidae, two to Pinidae and 1365 to Magnoliidae (three paleoherbs, 221 monocots and 1144 eudicots). The endemic flora belongs to 29 orders, 67 families and 304 genera. Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria and Abruzzo are the four regions richest in endemics. About 58% of endemics are confined to a single administrative region. The most represented orders, families and genera are: Asterales, Caryophyllales and Asparagales, Asteraceae, Plumbaginaceae and Caryophyllaceae, Limonium , Centaurea and Hieracium , respectively. The phytogeographic isolation of Sardinia and Sicily and the separation of peninsular Italy from Northern Italy is confirmed. The relative isolation of Puglia with respect the remaining southern Italian pensinsular regions is also confirmed. Alpine region endemics (from northern Italy) are underrepresented.

http://bot.biologia.unipi.it/chiavi/Endemiti_Peruzzi.pdf

An inventory of vascular plants endemic to Italy

Detailed comparative karyotype analyses have proved to be an important tool for taxonomy and for understanding chromosome evolution. The basic principle of cytotaxonomy is that closely related species share a more similar karyotype than less related ones. However, phylogenetic studies have demonstrated that some karyotype features are more often recurrent than previously thought, meaning that similarity is not all. Two other criticisms to the cytotaxonomical interpretation are intraspecific variation, traditionally neglected, and the interpretation of chromosomal alterations based only on classical structural changes, without any investigative support. Chromosome numbers and nuclear DNA content are among the most reliable and practical characters for cytotaxonomical analyses involving a large number of species, whereas chromosome mapping with molecular probes is more recommended for a restricted number of species. In both cases, a robust phylogenetic tree is necessary to understand the relationsh...

Cytotaxonomy: The end of childhood

Chromosome diversity and evolution in Liliaceae.

Embryo-sac development in Gagea bohemica, G. chrysantha and G. granatellii conforms to the Euphorbia dulcis-type (=Fritillaria-type), and all three species are proterandrous. G. bohemica and G. chrysantha are embryologically closer to each other than to G. granatellii and both develop seven- and eight-nucleate female gametophytes (although with clearly different proportions). G. granatellii, however develops only seven-nucleate embryo-sacs. All the species share, in various ways, cytological and micromorphological aberrations in both male and female gametophytes. Pollen grains are mostly morphologically regular in G. bohemica and G. chrysantha, while in G. granatellii malformed pollen is dominant. The studied plants of G. bohemica and G. chrysantha produced a very low amount of seeds, while G. granatellii produced no seeds at all.

A comparative analysis of embryo-sac development in three closely-related Gagea species (Liliaceae), with some considerations on their reproductive strategies

The online platform “Wikiplantbase #Toscana” provides a framework where the full set of georeferenced floristic records of Tuscany (central Italy) can be entered, stored, updated and freely accessed through the Internet. As of 5 January 2015, the database stores 67,360 floristic records, referable to 3578 accepted specific and subspecific taxa. Most records are based on published data (80.6% of the total), then by published herbarium specimens (15.1%) and on unpublished field data (3.8%); unpublished herbarium records account only for 0.5% of the stored data. At present, the most represented species is the fern Pteridium aquilinum (L.) Kuhn subsp. aquilinum (Dennstaedtiaceae) with 234 records for 219 localities, but 625 species are still represented only by one record for a single locality. Data acquisition is far from complete, but in slightly more than one year a massive amount of data was accumulated, and can be maintained up-to-date with relatively little effort. This could power several researches su...

Wikiplantbase #Toscana, breaking the dormancy of floristic data

The large amount of morphological variability within Fritillaria montana Hoppe ex W.D.J. Koch, a southeastern European species described from northeastern Italy, led to the creation of several further taxa: Fritillaria caussolensis Goaty & Pons ex Adoino from southeastern France, Fritillaria orsiniana Parl. from central Italy, Fritillaria intermedia N. Terracc. and Fritillaria pollinensis N. Terracc. from southern Italy. Aiming to test the taxonomic value of these taxa, a biometric study of both herbarium and living specimens of F. montana s.l. is carried out. A total of 22 morphological features were analysed and measured in 417 plants from 46 different localities, including loci classici of all the involved taxa. In addition, typical populations of F. montana, F. caussolensis, F. intermedia, F. orsiniana and F. pollinensis and also several other Italian populations resulted with 2n = 18 chromosomes. We also counted 2n = 27 chromosomes in endotriploid cells of plants from Abruzzo. However, there...

K. F. Caparelli

Papers

Chromosome diversity and evolution in Liliaceae.

A comparative analysis of embryo-sac development in three closely-related Gagea species (Liliaceae), with some considerations on their reproductive strategies

Wikiplantbase #Toscana, breaking the dormancy of floristic data

A biometric study of Fritillaria montana Hoppe ex W.D.J. Koch s.l. (Liliaceae) shows a single polymorphic species, with no infraspecific taxa

A new index for the quantification of chromosome number variation: an application to selected animal and plant groups.