Comparing morphological with genetic distances between populations: A new method and its application to the Prosopis chilensis-P. flexuosa complex

Abstract

The biological units that are the object of management, preservation and improvement for the development of sustainable productive systems in natural areas, need to be differentiated and analyzed. Attending to this need, a new morphological distance is presented in this work. This distance is based on qualitative criteria and is applied to numerical taxonomy studies. The characteristics of this trait allow its comparison with the genetic distance of GREGORIUS (1974). Both parameters are essential tools in basic studies of native species populations. The morphological distance is applied to reveal genetically differentiated units in a swarm of hybrids between closely related species, and this result is compared with the results obtained from the application of traditional methods of numerical taxonomy.