Literature reviews

plant species (Sarracenia; Sarraceniaceae) is lower than widespread congeners. American Jour-nal of Botany 100(10): 2092-2101. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service lists Sarracenia alabamensis, S. oreophila, and S. jonesii as en-dangered species. To determine the genetic diversity or genetic health within these species this study sampled between 4-15 clumps (i.e. presumed individuals) from 3 of the about 6 S. alabamensis sites known, 8 of the 40 S. oreophila sites, and 6 of the 10 S. jonesii sites. The number of clumps per site varied as half the sites had very few plants. The S. alabamensis sites had 8 to 12 clumps of plants each, 3 of the S. oreophila sites had 5 to 11 clumps, and 3 of the S. jonesii sites had 4 to 6 clumps. The authors determined chloroplast non-coding DNA sequences and DNA microsatellite data from small leaf samples. (Non-coding DNA sequences and the small tandem repeat DNA sequences that constitute the “microsatellites ” evolve very quickly. The microsatellite procedure consists of as-sessing the size of selected microsatellites and not their actual DNA sequences.) For the chloroplast DNA sequences recovered in the study, each of the species had a unique set of variants. There was no variation within the S. jonesii plants while there were two variants within S. alabamensis. The North Carolina and Georgia S. oreophila sites near Lake Chatuge had the same unique variant whil