Heavy metal pollution, selection, and genome size: The species of the Zerjav study revisited with flow cytometry.

The Death Valley Zerjav in northern Slovenia exhibits a gradient of heavy metal pollution in the soil with severe consequences for species richness and composition along this gradient. Recently, a progressive loss of large-genome species in parallel with increasing concentrations of heavy metals has been shown. Here, we have measured the genome size of a near-complete sample of these species with flow cytometry and analysed the correlation of heavy metal pollution with the C- and Cx-values assigned to the test plots. The method of probability analysis was a hypergeometric distribution method. We confirm, on a different methodological basis than previously, that along the pollution gradient, species with high C- and Cx-values are increasingly underrepresented. This lends support to the "large genome constraint hypothesis", predicting that plants with large genomes are at a disadvantage under all aspects of evolution, ecology, and phenotype, because junk DNA imposes a load to the organism

Floristic records from Karavanke/ Karawanken and Kamniske Alpe/Steiner Alpen (Slovenia and Austria)

New floristic records from the eastern Karavanke/Karawanken and Kamniske Alpe/Steiner Alpen (Slovenia and Austria) are reported. Allium kermesinum is new for Austria; Arabis soyeri subsp. subcoriacea, Carex rupestris and Draba dubia are new for the Kamniske Alpe/Steiner Alpen; for Androsace hausmannii, Arabis stellulata, Carex ornithopodioides, Pedicularis rosea, Salix serpyllifolia and Veronica fruticulosa new localities are presented. Furthermore, taxonomic problems in Oxytropis sect. Oxytropis and Arabis pumila sensu lato are discussed