Abstract Detail

From the backbone to diversification: unraveling the evolutionary history of Ericales

Medellín-Zabala, Diana [1], Goncalves, Deise [2], Pizzardo, Raquel [1], Chanderbali, Andre [4], Soltis, Douglas [5], Soltis, Pamela [6], Vargas, Oscar [7], Smith, Stephen [8], Dick, Christopher [9].

A phylogenetic approach to the actinomorphic-flowered Neotropical Lecythidaceae - Grias and Gustavia, based on nuclear and plastome targeted-markers.

Lecythidaceae (Ericales) is a pantropical family of woody plants of ca. 278 tree species with three subfamilies: Foetidioideae, with species in Madagascar, Planchonioideae, in Asia and Africa, and Lecythidoideae which includes 10 genera and ca. 232 species restricted to the Neotropics. These plants are understory, canopy, or emergent trees with fibrous bark, woody fruit capsules and a wide variety of floral morphology. Lecythidaceae is the third most abundant family of trees in the Amazon, providing important ecological services such as carbon sequestration and food resources for pollinators and seed dispersers. The global center of species richness and ecological importance is in the Amazon basin and Guiana Shield, where most Lecythidaceae research has been focused. However, there are genera with different ranges like Grias and Gustavia, occurring in the Andean and Chocó Biogeographic regions where several gaps lie, due to the reduced sampling. Besides being ecologically important, these genera are interesting for their actinomorphic-floral morphology, more similar to the Old-World’s than the New-World’s zygomorphic groups. Despite multiple studies having been performed for Lecythidaceae, there are still incongruences among hypotheses about the evolution of these and other genera. The most recent phylogenetic study for Lecythidaceae included 24 species representing the three subfamilies, used Angio353 targeted nuclear markers, and found incongruences between nuclear and plastome phylogenies. We expanded the sampling to more than 90 species for Lecythidaceae, from 8% to 58% of the species included in Grias, and from 4% to 34% of Gustavia. We performed a Maximum Likelihood analysis for Lecythidaceae in IQ-TREE, based on nuclear markers targeted by the Angio353 probes in 94 species, and 78 plastome genes in 95 species. Additionally, we tested the congruence between nuclear-plastome topologies and between species trees and gene trees. In congruence with previous studies, we recovered Eschweilera and Lecythis as paraphyletic in both topologies. According to the nuclear phylogeny, we found high support for Grias + Gustavia. The monophyly of Grias is congruent with previous studies where the genus was suggested as a clade based on morphological and molecular characters. In the plastome phylogeny, Gustavia was recovered monophyletic, however, Grias theobromicarpa did not nest with other species of Grias making the genus non-monophyletic. Since most species of Gustavia in this study occur in the Amazon basin and Guayana Shield, increasing sampling from Central America, the InterAndean Valleys and Chocó will allow us to better understand the evolutionary history of the genera. Previous studies have suggested that the complexity of wetland habitats and their association with the Andean uplift most likely had an important role in the evolution of Amazonian Lecythidaceae as well as other plants. Therefore, our study with a higher representation of Lecythidaceae taxa will contribute to understanding the mechanisms of speciation that have caused diversification, and endemism in Central America and the Pacific Coast of South America.

1 - University of Michigan, 1105 N University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA
2 - University Of Michigan, Ecology And Evolutionary Biology, 800 Fuller St. APT #16, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104, United States
3 - University of Michigan, 1105 N University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA
4 - University Of Florida, Florida Museum Of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA
5 - University of Florida, Florida Museum of Natural History,, 3215 Hull Road, P. O. Box 2710, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA
6 - University Of Florida, Florida Museum Of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, 32611.0, United States
7 - 1162 7th ST, Apt A, Arcata, CA, 95521, United States
8 - University of Michigan, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 1105 N University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109
9 - University of Michigan, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 1105 N University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

Keywords:
Angio353
phylogenomics
plastome
target-capture.

Presentation Type: Colloquium Presentations
Number: C3006
Abstract ID:547
Candidate for Awards:None