Possibilities of speciation following anthropogenous environmental changes in the central sandy area of the Carpathian Basin through the example of festuca taxa

Abstract

Our goal is to check and revise the dominant Festuca species of vegetation types formed under extraordinary conditions through morphotaxonomic and ploidy analyses. To accomplish this, we had to add examinations of dominant species in grasslands further from the Danube in the Carpathian Basin and East Central Europe. Individuals of examined taxa were analysed using 26 parameters of the inflorescences. Ploidy was analyzed using low cytometry. After deforestation and shrub cutting, bare soil patches of areas exposed to anthropogenous effects had provided an opportunity new vegetation to form. As a result of this work, new species Festuca pseudovaginata had been discovered here, which is endemic in the Carpathian Basin. Survey continues in order to clear other hardly identifiable taxa. The results have confirmed the presence of the species, but we also have new occurences discovered. We verified F. vaginata and F. pseudovaginata from open sandy areas. In closing grasslands F. javorkae and F. wagneri appears. In Slovakia we found F. wagneri and F. pseudovaginata as new species in the country’s flora. We could add new appearance data of F. javorkae, and describe F. brevipila as a new taxon of the Hungarian flora. Furthermore, a possibly new species also appeared during our research, on which we found distinctive morphological features, but to describe it as new species it needs further ITS analyses.