Bilateral Asymmetry and Shape of Lamina Plantago major L

Abstract

The aim of the work was to answer the question whether pollution by vehicles and the geographical location of populations affect the asymmetry and shape of the leaf plate Plantago major. The Generalized Procrustes Analysis was provided and the difference in the variance of paired landmarks was indicated. Based on vector coordinates, the symmetry and asymmetry covariance matrices of two types were created, and canonical covariance analysis was performed. The difference was found using the distances between the centers of the coordinate sets, the so-called Mahalanobis distances. The overall pool of leaves showed the presence of fluctuating asymmetry at the level of leaf blades in roadside populations. In the control, a mixture of two types of asymmetry: fluctuating and directional was traced. Canonical variation analysis showed the difference between the center of sets (p <0.0001). A correlation was obtained between the symmetric and asymmetric components of the shape. An allometric ratio of size/asymmetry and size/shape of the sheet plate were not obtained. The decrease in the number of landmarks from 52 to 26 did not affect the results. Thus motor transport, as shown by most of the samples (4 out of 6), had a significant impact on both the shape and asymmetry of the leaf blades. The geographical difference also affected both type of variability, as the difference in the asymmetry and shape of the plantain leaf blades increased over the geographical extent from Vladimir to Moscow on a distance about 200km.