Dominant DNA markers based comparison of populations of Impatiens parviflora invasive in Baltic district

Abstract

Species of Balsaminaceae are very numerous and distributed in all the continents of the world. Despite it, only 5 species are growing in Europe. For Baltic district list is poorer and comprises only one native and two alien species. Impatiens parviflora is aggressive alien species of this country documented since the first half of the former century, despite existence in Europe extends to 19th century. Violence of I. parviflora in Europe was documented earlier than molecular investigations were elaborated. In Lithuania, molecular studies employing RAPD markers have been carried out for I. parviflora populations [1, 2]. Concerning inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) markers data is available only for the other genera of invasive in Lithuania species [3], [4], while information for I. parviflora remains unknown. So the objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic variability at ISSR loci of populations of I. parviflora differing in geography and habitats. Plants were collected from geographically contrasting locations. For molecular studies four 12-mer primers (ISSR2, ISSR3, ISSR5 and ISSR6) were used as it is described by Provan et al. [5]. The work was sponsored by Lithuania Research Council, project No LEK-07/2012. Among populations of I. parviflora genetic parameters ranged in the following intervals: 47–55 % of polymorphic DNA bands, 0.13–0.15 for Nei’s gene diversity, 0.20–0.24 for Shannon’s information index. Further search of molecular studies is needed extending marker types and geography of populations.