Assessment of genetic diversity and distance of three Cicuta virosa populations in South Korea

Abstract

Cicuta virosa L. (Apiaceae) is a perennial emergent plant designated as an endangered species in South Korea. Accordingto the former records, only four natural habitats remain in South Korea. A former study suggested that three of four popu-lations (Pyeongchang: PC, Hoengseong: HS, Gunsan: GS) would be classified as different ecotypes based on their differentmorphological characteristics and life cycle under different environmental conditions. To evaluate this suggestion, weestimated genetic diversity in each population and distance among three populations by random amplification of poly-morphic DNA. Seven random primers generated a total of 61 different banding positions, 36 (59%) of them were polymor-phic. Neis gene diversity and the Shannon diversity index increased in the order of PC < HS < GS, which is the same orderof population size. In the two-dimensional (2D) plot of first two principal components in principal component analysiswith the presence of 61 loci, individuals could be grouped as three populations easily (proportion of variance = 0.6125).Neis genetic distance for the three populations showed the same tendency with the geographical distance within threepopulations. And it is also similar to the result of discriminant analysis with the morphological or life-cycle factors fromthe previous study. From the results, we concluded that three different populations of C. virosa should be classified asecotypes based on not only morphology and phenology but genetic differences in terms of diversity and distance as well.