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Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology
Amaranthus is a genus taxonomically complex because of its high morphological variability, which led to nomenclatural disorders, misapplication of names, and misidentifications. Floristic and taxonomic studies on this genus are still incomplete, and many questions remain open. Seed micromorphology h...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10005098/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36903848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12050987 |
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author | Iamonico, Duilio Hussain, Amara Noor Sindhu, Arya Saradamma Anil Kumar, Venugopalan nair Shaheen, Shabnum Munir, Mamoona Fortini, Paola |
author_facet | Iamonico, Duilio Hussain, Amara Noor Sindhu, Arya Saradamma Anil Kumar, Venugopalan nair Shaheen, Shabnum Munir, Mamoona Fortini, Paola |
author_sort | Iamonico, Duilio |
collection | PubMed |
description | Amaranthus is a genus taxonomically complex because of its high morphological variability, which led to nomenclatural disorders, misapplication of names, and misidentifications. Floristic and taxonomic studies on this genus are still incomplete, and many questions remain open. Seed micromorphology has been shown to play an important role in the taxonomy of plants. Regarding Amaranthaceae and Amaranthus, investigations are rare, and they refer to one or a few species. With the primary aim to test if seed features are helpful in the taxonomy of Amaranthus, we here present a detailed SEM study on seed micromorphology in 25 Amaranthus taxa using morphometric methods. Seeds were collected from field surveys and herbarium specimens; 14 seed coat features (7 qualitative and 7 quantitative) were measured on 111 samples (up to 5 seeds per sample). The results obtained revealed that seeds micromorphology provides interesting new taxonomic data concerning some taxa (species and below ranks). In fact, we were able to distinguish a few seed types, including one or more taxa, i.e., blitum-type, crassipes-type, deflexus-type, tuberculatus-type, and viridis-type. On the other hand, seed features are not useful for other species, for example, those included in the deflexus-type (A. deflexus, A. vulgatissimus, A. cacciatoi, A. spinosus, A. dubius, and A. stadleyanus). A diagnostic key of the studied taxa is proposed. Subgenera cannot be distinguished using seed features, thus confirming the published molecular data. All these facts reveal, once again, the taxonomic complexity of the genus Amaranthus since, e.g., just a few seed types can be defined. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10005098 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100050982023-03-11 Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology Iamonico, Duilio Hussain, Amara Noor Sindhu, Arya Saradamma Anil Kumar, Venugopalan nair Shaheen, Shabnum Munir, Mamoona Fortini, Paola Plants (Basel) Article Amaranthus is a genus taxonomically complex because of its high morphological variability, which led to nomenclatural disorders, misapplication of names, and misidentifications. Floristic and taxonomic studies on this genus are still incomplete, and many questions remain open. Seed micromorphology has been shown to play an important role in the taxonomy of plants. Regarding Amaranthaceae and Amaranthus, investigations are rare, and they refer to one or a few species. With the primary aim to test if seed features are helpful in the taxonomy of Amaranthus, we here present a detailed SEM study on seed micromorphology in 25 Amaranthus taxa using morphometric methods. Seeds were collected from field surveys and herbarium specimens; 14 seed coat features (7 qualitative and 7 quantitative) were measured on 111 samples (up to 5 seeds per sample). The results obtained revealed that seeds micromorphology provides interesting new taxonomic data concerning some taxa (species and below ranks). In fact, we were able to distinguish a few seed types, including one or more taxa, i.e., blitum-type, crassipes-type, deflexus-type, tuberculatus-type, and viridis-type. On the other hand, seed features are not useful for other species, for example, those included in the deflexus-type (A. deflexus, A. vulgatissimus, A. cacciatoi, A. spinosus, A. dubius, and A. stadleyanus). A diagnostic key of the studied taxa is proposed. Subgenera cannot be distinguished using seed features, thus confirming the published molecular data. All these facts reveal, once again, the taxonomic complexity of the genus Amaranthus since, e.g., just a few seed types can be defined. MDPI 2023-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10005098/ /pubmed/36903848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12050987 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Iamonico, Duilio Hussain, Amara Noor Sindhu, Arya Saradamma Anil Kumar, Venugopalan nair Shaheen, Shabnum Munir, Mamoona Fortini, Paola Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology |
title | Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology |
title_full | Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology |
title_fullStr | Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology |
title_full_unstemmed | Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology |
title_short | Trying to Understand the Complicated Taxonomy in Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae): Insights on Seeds Micromorphology |
title_sort | trying to understand the complicated taxonomy in amaranthus (amaranthaceae): insights on seeds micromorphology |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10005098/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36903848 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants12050987 |
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