Repeated jumps from Northwest Africa to the European continent: The case of peripheral populations of an annual plant

Peripheral populations (i.e., those occurring on the edge of a species’ distribution range) can have different origins and genetic characteristics, and they may be critical for the conservation of genetic diversity. We investigated European peripheral populations of Scrophularia arguta , a widespread, annual plant distributed from Arabia to Northwest Africa and Macaronesia. Only two small disjunct population groups of this species occur in...