Effect of reproductive Interference on distributional relationships in Geranium

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Reproductive Interference (RI) has been gaining an attention for its explanatory power in distributional relationships between closely related species. We focused on several plants including Geranium species and investigated if RI between the congeneric species affected on their distributional relationships.Based on our study, we found that a pair of Geranium species exerted RI to each other, which might be a reason for their habitat partitioning. We also recognized a strange distributional pattern for G. robertianum in Japan, in which a few populations were known to be restricted as endangered but other populations were recently found supposedly as invasive plants. Our molecular phylogenetic analyses suggest that the recently found populations are more likely naturalized from sources outside Japan.