Independent species status of Iris vorobievii N.S. Pavlova, Iris mandshurica Maxim., and Iris humilis Georgi (Iridaceae): Evidence from the nuclear and chloroplast genomes

-Nuclear (RAPD) and chloroplast (trnH-psbA, atpB-rbcL, rps4, trnL-trnF, and trnS-trnG) molecular DNA markers were used to study the populations of closely related species of the genus Iris L.: Iris vorobievii N.S. Pavlova, I. mandshurica Maxim., and I. humilis Georgi. An analysis of 243 RAPD fragments made it possible to calculate the main population parameters and to identify species-specific RAPD markers. Differences that discriminated the species were found in all but one (trnL-trnF) cpDNA region. The total length of the four variable cpDNA regions was 3640 bp, indels included. Their variation was low. A total of 22 variable sites (0.63%) were found; of these, 13 were parsimony informative and 9 were noninformative. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) revealed significantly (P < 0.0001) high differentiation of both nuclear (F ST = 0.681) and chloroplast (F ST = 0.854) genomes for the species examined. Thus, a multigene approach confirmed the independent species status of I. vorobievii, I. mandshurica, and I. humilis and showed that I. vorobievii and I. mandshurica, but not I. humilis, are found in Primorye.