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Epidermal crystals in Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae, Acalyphoideae) as a new taxonomic trait of the genus

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Abstract

The occurrence of epidermal crystals in the species of the genus Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae, Acalyphoideae) is described and analyzed. The epidermal surface of 190 Acalypha specimens, belonging to 110 species and subspecies, was studied with a scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the elemental composition of the found crystals was examined using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The results show that 96.4 % of the studied species have epidermal crystals, mainly located on the leaf surface, but also on the bracts and flowers. The crystals exhibit significant variation, and four types of crystals are recognized: prismatic, styloids, stellate, and druses, which are, respectively, designated with Ac, Bc, Cc and Dc letters. We have not found any reference to stellate crystals in the angiosperm morphological or anatomical literature, and druses are observed and described under SEM in Acalypha for the first time. The elemental composition of the crystals shows that all of them exhibit typical peaks of calcium. We discuss the possible taxonomic importance of crystals, due to the association that some of these types of crystals have with groups of closely morphologically related species. We have not found a relation between the presence or the type of crystals and the habitat or distribution of the species that present them. We do not know other genera of Euphorbiaceae where the presence of crystals is so widespread, so we propose that they should be considered as a distinctive feature of this genus.

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Acknowledgements

We kindly thank the curators and staff of the herbaria mentioned for facilitating the study of their specimens; Dra. Ricarda Riina of the Real Jardín Botánico of Madrid, Dra. Renata Maria Strozi Alves Meira, of the Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Minas Gerais, Brazil, and Narah Costa Vitarelli, of the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Sudeste de Minas Gerais, Brazil, for their helpful comment about the stellate crystals; and Esperanza Salvador Rueda and the staff of the SEM laboratory of the Servicio Interdepartamental de Investigación (SIDI-UAM) for his meticulous technical work. Finally, we express our gratitude to Lucía Cardiel Celis for the careful grammatical review and to the editor and reviewers for their suggestions and helpful comments.

Funding

This study was funded by Gobierno de España, through the research Project EUI 2008-0388, and by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) and the Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid), through the research project CCG07-UAM/AMB-1453. This research has received support from the SYNTHESYS Project (http://www.synthesys.info/; FR-TAF 6307, DE-TAF 3319, and SE-TAF 5590) that is financed by the European Community Research Infrastructure Action under the FP7 Ideas: European Research Council “Capacities” Program.

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  1. Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, Postal Code 28049, Madrid, Spain

    José María Cardiel, Iris Montero-Muñoz, Emma Ortúñez, Elena Dorda & Irene Sancho-García

  2. Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Global (CIBC-UAM), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblanco, Postal Code 28049, Madrid, Spain

    José María Cardiel & Emma Ortúñez

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  1. José María Cardiel
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Cardiel, J.M., Montero-Muñoz, I., Ortúñez, E. et al. Epidermal crystals in Acalypha (Euphorbiaceae, Acalyphoideae) as a new taxonomic trait of the genus. Plant Syst Evol 306, 83 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-020-01711-6

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