title: Sharpening the species boundaries in theCladonia mediterraneacomplex (Cladoniaceae, Ascomycota).
abstract: The complexCladonia mediterraneabelongs to the sectionImpexaeand is formed byC. azorica,C. macaronesicaandC.mediterranea.These species are basically distributed in the Mediterranean and Macaronesian Regions. In the present work the limits between the species of this complex are re-examined. To this end, the morphological characters were studied along with the secondary metabolites and the DNA sequences from three loci (ITS rDNA, IGS rDNA andrpb2). The morphological data were studied by principal component analysis (PCA), while the DNA sequences were analyzed using several approaches available to delimit species: genealogical concordance phylogenetic species recognition, species tree (BEAST* and spedeSTEM) and cohesion species recognition. In addition, the genealogical sorting index was used in order to assess the monophyly of the species. The different procedures used in our study turned out to be highly congruent with respect to the limits they establish, but these limits are not the ones separating the prior species. Either the morphological analysis or the different approaches to species delimitation indicate thatC. mediterraneais a different species fromC. macaronesica, whileC. azoricaandC. macaronesica, which are reduced to synonyms ofC. portentosa, constitute a separate lineage.
authors.affiliation: Botanical Museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 7, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pino-Bodas
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Botánica, Ecología y Fisiología Vegetal, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife 38071, Canary Islands, Spain.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pérez-Vargas
authors.affiliation: Botanical Museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 7, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stenroos
authors.affiliation: Botanical Museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History, P.O. Box 7, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ahti
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Biología Vegetal 1, Facultad de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Burgaz
keywords: Iberian Peninsula; Macaronesia; coalescence; integrative taxonomy; lichen forming fungi; molecular systematic; species delimitation; taxonomy