Some light shed on stenoendemic Galium transcarpaticum (Rubiaceae) from the Ukrainian Carpathians

ARPHA Preprints, doi: 10.3897/arphapreprints.e201287

Some light shed on stenoendemic Galium transcarpaticum (Rubiaceae) from the Ukrainian Carpathians

Andriy Novikov^‡, Viktor Nachychko^§, Oleksandr Zinenko^|

‡ State Museum of Natural History of the NAS of Ukraine, Lviv, Ukraine§ Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Lviv, Ukraine| V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Kharkiv, Ukraine

Corresponding author: Andriy Novikov ( novikoffav@gmail.com )

This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Citation: Novikov A, Nachychko V, Zinenko O (2026) Some light shed on stenoendemic Galium transcarpaticum (Rubiaceae) from the Ukrainian Carpathians. ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e201287

Abstract

Galium transcarpaticum was described in 1979 as a stenoendemic occurring exclusively in the Ukrainian Carpathians. Since then, little has been contributed to its taxonomy and distribution, and only a few specimens have been collected. We successfully isolated DNA and amplified nuclear (ITS) and plastid (trnH-psbA, atpB-rbcL, trnL (c-d), and trnL (e-f)) markers from G. transcarpaticum isotype specimens deposited at the LWS herbarium. The obtained results do not allow delimiting G. transcarpaticum as an independent species, but rather place it within G. mollugo. Hence, the new combination Galium mollugo subsp. transcarpaticum (Stojko & Tasenk.) A.V.Novikov, Nachychko & Zinenko.

Keywords

Galium, Rubiaceae, Ukrainian Carpathians, taxonomy, herbarium DNA