Studies On The Relationship Between The Leaf Morphological Variation And The Genetic Diversity Of Kingdonia Uniflora

Kingdonia uniflora is an endangered and protective species of China. The relationship between the leaf morphological variation patterns and genetic diversity of this species were studied in this paper. We attempted to understand the endangered causes of this species from the aspects of morphological variation, genetic diversity and the relationship between them.1. The morphological variationThere are remarkable correlations between every two of the three micro-morphological characters of Kingdonia uniflora, also the same to some macorscopically characters.We found that the morphological characters of Kingdonia uniflora are variability among different populations and different areas that are consisted of different populations, but the characters are overlapped among the populations and areas.2. The genetic diversityNine populations of Kingdonia uniflora were examined with randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers. We find the genetic diversity is largely within and not among populations and the levels of genetic diversity are low .All these can be explained by the conservation of Kingdonia uniflora.3. The relationship between leaf morphological variation and genetic diversityThere are not correlation between the variant patterns of morphological characters and genetic diversity. Morphologic characters is different in different areas, but genetic characters are the same.4. The endangered causes and protective strategyThe low levels of genetic variability should be one of the endangered causes of Kingdonia uniflora.Because genetic diversity is largely found within populations, when we make protective strategies, we should collected the most samples we can get in populations.