Southern European mountain ranges have long been recognized as important hotspots of genetic diversity and areas of high endemism. Reflecting the geographical complexity of these mountain ranges, many European high-mountain species exhibit disjunctions on a variety of geographical scales. One of the long-neglected, poorly investigated and unresolved taxonomic problems concerns Apennine and Balkan members of Ranunculus section Leucoranunculus. According to the most recent taxonomic treatment, this section includes Ranunculus crenatus, distributed predominantly in siliceous massifs of the Carpathians and the Balkan Peninsula, but with a highly disjunct partial distribution area in the eastern Alps, and Ranunculus magellensis, which is usually considered a calcicolous endemic of the central Apennines. However, R. magellensis has also been suggested to occur in the carbonate ranges of the Albanian Alps, which would render this species amphi-Adriatic. We used complementary molecular methods (sequences of the nuclear ribosomal ITS region and of plastid DNA and amplified fragment length polymorphisms), relative genome size measurements and morphometric analyses to elucidate the relationships in Ranunculus section Leucoranunculus. Specifically, we asked if it comprises only a single, widespread and morphologically variable species or several narrowly distributed species with constant morphology. The results of our study showed that populations growing on limestone in the Albanian Alps in northern Albania and southern Montenegro are divergent and should be recognized as a new species, Ranunculus bertisceus Kuzmanović, D.Lakušić, Frajman & Schönsw., sp. nov. These populations differ not only from R. crenatus s.s., which grows on silicates, but also from the calcicolous Apennine endemic R. magellensis. The eastern Alpine populations of R. crenatus, which occur very locally in the Niedere Tauern area, originate from immigration from the Bosnian mountains.

中文翻译：

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被诅咒山脉（巴尔干半岛西部）长期被忽视的多样性：毛茛属植物是一种遗传和形态不同的新物种

长期以来，南欧山脉一直被认为是遗传多样性的重要热点和高度特有的地区。反映这些山脉的地理复杂性，许多欧洲高山物种在各种地理尺度上表现出分离。长期被忽视、研究不足和未解决的分类学问题之一涉及毛茛属部分白毛茛属的亚平宁和巴尔干成员。根据最近的分类学处理，这部分包括毛茛，主要分布在喀尔巴阡山脉和巴尔干半岛的硅质地块，但在阿尔卑斯山东部的部分分布区域高度分离，以及毛茛，通常被认为是钙质亚平宁中部特有的。然而，R。magellensis 也被认为出现在阿尔巴尼亚阿尔卑斯山的碳酸盐山脉中，这将使该物种成为两栖亚得里亚海。我们使用互补分子方法（核核糖体 ITS 区域和质体 DNA 的序列和扩增的片段长度多态性）、相对基因组大小测量和形态计量分析来阐明毛茛部分白毛茛的关系。具体来说，我们询问它是否仅包含一个单一的、分布广泛且形态可变的物种，还是几个分布狭窄且形态不变的物种。我们的研究结果表明，在阿尔巴尼亚北部和黑山南部的阿尔巴尼亚阿尔卑斯山的石灰岩上生长的种群存在差异，应被视为一个新物种，毛茛属 bertisceus Kuzmanović，D.Lakušić，Frajman & Schönsw.，sp。十一月 这些种群不仅与生长在硅酸盐上的 R. crenatus ss 不同，而且与钙质亚平宁特有的 R. magellensis 不同。高山东部的 R. crenatus 种群在 Niedere Tauern 地区非常局部地出现，起源于波斯尼亚山脉的移民。