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Campanula hawkinsiana and C. ramosissima are among the poorly investigated Campanula species distributed in the Balkan Peninsula. According to recent phylogenetic studies these species are closely related, and they belong to the section Decumbentes along with the two species from the Iberian Peninsula. However, none of these published studies included a larger number of populations of C. hawkinsiana and C. ramosissima, nor were they studied in detail at the morphological level. During our floristic investigations in the Balkan Peninsula, we observed a great morphological variability within the populations of C. ramosissima. The most morphologically specific and diverse are C. ramosissima populations from Montenegro. Considering all this, in this study, both molecular (AFLP fingerprinting and DNA sequencing) and classical morphometric analyses were applied with the aim to get insight into the genetic diversity and morphological variability of the populations from Montenegro and geographically close populations of both species from the section Decumbentes in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula. Significant morphological differences and a distinct position based on molecular phylogenetic evidence indicate that the plants from Montenegro should be recognized as a new subspecies, described here as Campanula ramosissima subsp. megapetala subsp. nov. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tanacetum cinerariifolium is an endemic species of the eastern Adriatic coast that synthesizes the natural insecticide pyrethrin. We have characterized the complete chloroplast genome of the species and analyzed its phylogeny within the Asteraceae family. The complete chloroplast genome of T. cinerariifolium has a size of 150,136 bp, including a large single-copy (LSC) region of 82,717 bp, a small single-copy (SSC) region of 18,411bp, and a pair of inverted repeats (IRs) of 24,504 bp. The chloroplast genome of T. cinerariifolium encodes 108 genes, including 77 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 27 tRNA genes, and 4 rRNA genes. Phylogenetic analyses based on the complete chloroplast genomes placed T. cinerariifolium in a sister position to species of the genera Artemisia and Chrysanthemum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Mediterranean region is one of the world's major centres of biodiversity. Research on plant species diversity in this region has neglected the area along the eastern part of the Adriatic basin in comparison to the other Mediterranean areas. The main aim of this study was to focus on this neglected area, by supplying data which is at present lacking in order to discuss the species-area relationship (SAR), floristic richness and endemism of the Adriatic islands and coast. Floristic data for 106 Croatian islands collected by different authors were integrated, systematised and presented in a form usable by other researchers worldwide. The Power (Arrhenius) function was used for modelling (by non-linear regression) the SAR. Residuals around the regression curve (as indicators of floristic diversity without the influence of island area) were calculated for each island. The proportion of endemics in the total island flora varies from 0% up to 28.6%, and 17.5% for narrow endemics. Floristic richness of the broader region was estimated (on the basis of SAR extrapolation) on 1807 species for all Croatian islands, and on 2797 species for the entire Mediterranean area in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationships among western Balkan and some amphi-Adriatic endemic campanulas were studied using RFLP analysis of the 1.8-kb trnT - trnF chloroplast DNA region. The results were compared to those of a comparative floral morphometry study performed earlier on a similar sample. Maximum parsimony and distance methods produced very similar results to those of the floral morphometry, both of which point to a clear separation of the taxa into three main clades. The first isophyllous, or Garganicae series, clade comprised Campanula poscharskyana, C. portenschlagiana, C. garganica, C. reatina and two C. fenestrellata-subspecies. The second "isophylloid" clade consisted of C. pyramidalis agg., C. waldsteiniana agg. and C. carpatica. The third, heterophyllous clade was very uniform, comprising undistinguishable taxa of the C. rotundifolia complex and alpine endemic C. cochleariifolia. Interestingly the Ligurian stenoendemic C. isophylla was clearly separated from the members of the ser. Garganicae, C. reatina was the most distant taxon in the Garganicae clade, the controversial species Asyneuma pichleri was nested inside the Campanula core, while Campanula carpatica was closer to the "isophylloids" than to the sect. Rapunculus Boiss. In order to resolve the taxonomic uncertainty among the closely related heterophyllous taxa more refined molecular methods, e.g. AFLP or microsatellites, should be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]