The endangered Florida pondweed (Potamogeton floridanus) is a hybrid: Why we need to understand biodiversity thoroughly

Abstract

Thorough understanding of biodiversity is a fundamental prerequisite for biological research. A lack of taxonomic knowledge and species misidentifications are particularly critical for conservation. Here we present an example of Potamogeton floridanus, the Florida Pondweed, an endangered taxon endemic to a small area in the Florida panhandle, whose taxonomic status remained controversial for more than a century, and all previous attempts to elucidate its identity have failed. We applied molecular approaches to tackle the origin of the mysterious taxon and supplemented them with morphological and anatomical investigations of both historical herbarium collections and plants recently collected in the type area for a comprehensive taxonomic reassessment. Sequencing of two nuclear ribosomal markers and one chloroplast non-coding spacer resulted in the surprising discovery that P. floridanus is a hybrid of P. pulcher and P. oakesianus, with the former being the maternal parent. The hybrid colony is currently geographically isolated from the distribution range of P. oakesianus. We show that previous molecular analyses have failed to reveal its hybrid identity due to inadequate nuclear DNA sequence editing. This is an example how the uncritical use of automized sequence reads can hamper molecular species identifications and also affect phylogenetic tree construction and interpretation. This unique hybrid taxon, P.×floridanus, adds another case study to the debate on hybrid protection; consequences for its conservation are discussed.