Genetic variation within and between British species of Papaver L.: an overview.

Abstract

As part of a study into the ecological genetics of rare arabIe weeds the distribution of genetic variation within and between four species of Papaver L.; two common, P. rhoeas and P. dubium, and two rare in England, P. hybridum and P. argemone; was investigated in a common environment experiment
10 individuals from 10 families from each of four populations of the four species were grown from seed, and a variety of physiological and morphological characters were measured. In addition, leaf images were analysed using Fourier coefficients to create a further 28 variables.
Multivariate (canonical discriminant or variate) analysis was used to gain a general picture of the hierarchical distribution of variation within and between the species, using values of Wilks' lambda to partition the variation at each level.
The results show that while most variation is between species, the rarer species show less variation within and between families than between populations, while the commoner ones share their variation more equally between populations and families.