Genetic and historical relationships among geothermally adapted Agrostis (bentgrass) of North America and Kamchatka: evidence for a previously unrecognized, thermally adapted taxon.

Agrostis species have been known to evolve ecotypes rapidly in response to unusual edaphic conditions. The geographic distribution of Agrostis taxa in Lassen Volcanic National Park (California) and Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming) in the United States and the Valley of the Geysers (Kamchatka Peninsula) in Russia suggests that Agrostis scabra might have independently evolved morphologically similar ecotypes several times. We used RAPDs to show that, contrary to expectation, the thermal populations are not independently evolved, but instead constitute a single taxon that currently has four names. A UPGMA including the four thermal and nine nonthermal Agrostis taxa showed that the thermal cluster divides into geographically distinct subclusters, but that two morphologically distinct thermal taxa do not cluster independently. Even though currently confused with the thermal populations, nonthermal A. scabra is not closely related. An analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) showed significant differentiation between the thermal populations and the nonthermal species sampled in this study. Splitting a hypothesized thermal operational taxonomic unit (OTU) into its components (geographically separated populations) does not greatly affect the partitioning of variation among OTUs. All thermal populations therefore should be assigned to the same taxon, but its taxonomic rank cannot be determined at this time.