JOURNAL OF TAXONOMY AND BIOSISTEMATICS
Year:2018 | Volume:10 | Issue:36|Papers Count:6

Identification of the flora in mining area is necessary for biodiversity conservation as well as vegetation restoration. In this study, flora and functional groups of plants were evaluated in Sungun copper mine, East Azarbayjan province, one of the most important sources of copper in Iran. The vegetation was assessed in the mining area including mine wastes, the area that affected by acid mine drainage and outcrops. The results showed that the greatest number of species and plant families were found in outcrops with 73 species from 21 families. The most frequent plant families were Poaceae (20. 55%) and Asteraceae (16. 43%). In the area that was affected by acid, mine drainage Astraceae (20. 93%) and Poaceae (20. 55%) were dominant but in waste dumps the Asteraceae (23. 64%) and Fabaceae (14. 55%) were the main plant families. Some species were restricted to specific area such as Rhamnus cathartica, Fumaria bracteosa, Equisetum flviatile in acid drainage affected site, Chenopodium album, Atriplex tararica, Hyoscyamus arachnoideus in mine wastes. Carex stenophylla, Hypericum dogonbadanicum and Allium kotschyi were also found to be unique. It was also found that in all three sites the most dominant life forms were hemicryptophytes. There was not any species from phanerophyte in waste dumps. Forbs and perennials were the dominant species of the area and the most of the flora belonged to Iran-Turanian region. We found a potential of species particularly nitrogen fixing species in this area that could be beneficial for vegetation restoration.

Goynik protected region, with an area of 4764 ha is located in North Khorasan province in RazoJargalan. In order to investigate the flora of Goynik protected area and determine life forms and chorotypes of plant species, the present study was done from 2014 to 2015. In total, 208 species belong to 163 genera and 51 families were identified. Among them, 170 species were dicots. Asteraceae with 26 sp. was the largest family with high number of species; followed by Fabaceae, Lamiaceae and Poaceae with 20, 19 and 16 species, respectively. Astragalus with 6 species was the largest genus. Hemicryptophytes with 41% and therophytes with 23% are dominant life forms in the region followed by chamephytes, geophytes and phanerophytes. With regard to geographical distribution, most of the species identified (67%) are Irano-Turanian elements. Among the plant species of the region 21 species are in the red list of IUCN.

Analysis of population genetic structure using multilocus data, is generally performed by sequential run of the three computer programs, namely STRUCTURE, CLUMPP, and Distruct. The two latter programs lack Graphical User Interface (GUI), and the user must manually create inputs and settings files, using text editors out of the program environment. A number of facilitating programs have been developed, which are online, or dependent on statistical packages such as R. In this paper, after reviewing the aims and methods for analyzing the structure of populations using dominant molecular marker data, a new computer program, STRUCTUREasy is introduced. This program simplifies the analysis procedures, with no need for programing skills. STRUCTUREasy is an open source program with a simple user interface, running in Microsoft Office. Its application is for the extraction of Qmatrices of STRUCTURE and connecting the input files to downstream software, for providing ease of use, and more accuracy and pace, in population structure analysis using multilocus markers. This program runs in Microsoft Access 2016, and performs well in extracting data and settings between STRUCTURE, CLUMPP and Distruct software, for accuracy and pace.

This study aimed to compare meristic and morphometric traits of three species of the genus Acanthobrama from Iranian inland waters collected during 2011-2017. A total 68 specimens of A. marmid from the Gamasiab River, Tigris river drainage, 85 specimens of A. microlepis from the Aras and Sefid rivers, Caspian Sea basin, and 90 specimens of A. urmianus from Mahabad-Chai and Godar-Chai rivers, Lake Urmia basin were captured by beach seine and electrofishing device. After anesthesia, the collected specimens were fixed into 10% buffered formalin and were transferred to the laboratory for further studies. Six meristic and 16 morphometric characters were counted and measured. The results showed a significant difference between the studied species in all morphometric traits except the pectoral fin length (P<0. 05). In the cluster analysis, A. microlepis and A. urmianus were positioned in a clade. A significant difference found between the studied species in terms of the meristic traits, including the lateral line scales, dorsal-fin unbranched and branched rays, and Anal-fin branched rays (P<0. 05). MANOVA/CVA indicated that A. urmianus differed from A. microlepis in terms of the meristic traits. Also A. microlepis was positioned in a clade based on the result of meristic traits cluster analysis.

Forests are the most important genetic reserves in the world and are considered to be the main sources of water and soil, which, in order to play their role, requires a biodiversity factor. Alborz province has an appropriate species diversity due to the special climatic conditions, diversity of topography, and a large part of its area located in the folds of Alborz Mountains. In this regard, studying its tree and shrub genetic reserves is very important. The present study was conducted in two phases of justification and detailed. In the first stage, information about tree species and shrubs in Alborz province and their districts were obtained based on valid sources. Then, the Landsat 8 satellite image (2014) was prepared for Alborz Province. After calculating the vegetation index and writing the minimum-maximum functions, fields with trees and shrubs were separated from the empty areas. Entering the arena began with recording geographic location, identifying tree species and shrub species and developing distribution maps. The results showed that in less than 3 percent of the province Rosaceae families with 49. 12 percent, Cupressaceae with 24. 56, Berberidaceae with 12. 28, Elaeagnaceae with 5. 26, Betulaceae with 3. 5, Aceraceae with 1. 75, Leguminosae with 1. 75 and Rhamnaceae with 1. 75 percent, respectively, in terms of species form tree and shrub cover.

Striped hyena is the only member of Hyaena genus from Hyaenidae family which lives in Iran. In overall, our information about this species is little nationally and internationally. Therefore, basic information would be required to perform the informed protection action plan toward such valuable species. In the present study, we evaluated the gene diversity within the hyena populations in Iran by reproducing a 404 base pairs from mitochondrial gene ND2. DNA was extracted from 30 muscle tissue samples of the Iranian stripped hyena collected form road killed specimens in 12 different provinces. To determine the taxonomic status of the studied species, Mega 6 and Mr. Bayes 3. 2 software were used to draw phylogenetic trees (i. e. Neighbor Joining, Minimum Evaluation and Maximum Likelihood models). The obtained results revealed that there are only 0. 74 percent genetic distances between specimens and there is no significant gene diversity amongst the Iranian stripped hyena populations. In addition, the obtained posterior probability of over 90 percent for all specimens suggests that all studied specimens belong to the same species. Although, observed low genetic diversity in Iranian stripped hyena could be interpreted due to the lower sensitivity of this species against environmental stresses. But, according to the fact that gene differential relatively could reduce by using short base sequence, using other mitochondrial genes as well as longer base sequences are suggested to obtain a more clear picture from the Iranian striped hyena genetic status.