Dispersal Strategies in Roccellina Capensis (Arthoniales)

Morphological, anatomical, chemical and ecological evidence show that the South African lichen Roccellina capensis (Nyl. ex Stizenb.) Tehler has developed a dispersal strategy with either sexually dispersed individuals, or vegetatively dispersed, sorediate individuals, hence a putative species-pair. The concept ‘species-pair’ is well-known and widely used in lichenology. It refers to closely related, morphologically indistinguishable lichens that differ from each other by their dispersal strategies only. The so-called ‘ primary species ’ produces fruiting bodies and sexual spores, while its counterpart, the ‘ secondary species ’ is vegetatively dispersed by soredia, isidia or fragmentation. Our study uses molecular information to investigate if R. capensis should be treated as a species-pair or not. The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of the nuclear ribosomal DNA was sequenced for 17 specimens of R. capensis in order to test if sexual and asexual (sorediate) specimens would group into two distinct, monophyletic groups. Such grouping would support their recognition as separate taxa in a species-pair. We also investigated whether the randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) method would be a suitable procedure in population studies of lichens. The analysis of the ITS region produced a single most parsimonious tree. The sexual and asexual specimens were grouped according to their geographical distribution, rather than according to their dispersal strategy. This result clearly shows that the sexual and asexual specimens ofR. capensis do not represent a species-pair. The RAPD data set produced an almost completely unresolved tree due to several homoplasious characters, possibly a result of algal contamination.