Abstract Detail

Systematics

Shipunov, Alexey [1], Choi, Jinhee [2], DeSpiegelaere, Sarah [2], Lee, Hye Ji [2].

Phylogeny of the Buxineae: boxwoods and related.

Within flowering plants, boxwood family sensu stricto and several satellite groups form an old, distinct taxon comprising about 138 species, distributed worldwide but mainly associated with Tropical America, East/South Africa/Madagascar, and East Asia (Köhler, 2007). All six genera have clear morphological similarities (Oskolski et al., 2015) but little information is available about their phylogenetic relationships, especially on the species level. The recent work on Caribbean taxa (Gutiérrez, 2014) allowed to create the framework for understanding the evolution of the significant portion of American boxwood species and Buxineae as a whole, but data about many other species is still lacking. There is no comprehensive classification of the group.
Since our previous research was unable to place Haptanthus hazlettii with 100% of confidence, the first goal was to provide this placement basing on further research of its DNA. Then we decided to integrate as many worldwide data as possible and to build the comprehensive phylogeny of Buxineae. Geographical distribution of Buxineae is so broad and many species are extremely rare, therefore our strategy was based on the DNA extraction from the herbarium specimens. Fortunately, specimens of Buxineae typically retain the DNA of good quality for many years (Choi et al., 2015). To make our results comparable with previous research, we chose chloroplast rbcL as the first phylogeny marker, and to add more resolution to phylogenetic trees, nuclear ITS2 was also chosen. To obtain better results, we tuned the standard DNA extraction protocols, and also employed the TBT-PAR method (Samarakoon et al., 2013) of enhancing PCR. If the sample does not yield the good quality sequences, we tried to use another from the same species. The preference was always given to vouchers identified with Buxineae experts. In all, we extracted DNA from 209 samples and obtained 371 rbcL and ITS2 sequences of various quality from 110 species (which is 79% of the Buxineae).
Data from rbcL and ITS2 were integrated in the phylogeny tree thus represented both nuclear and chloroplast genomes. This tree allows to establish the comprehensive classification of the Buxineae, trace the times of diversification and biogeographic relationships between subgroups. One of the first conclusions which could be made on our molecular data, recent morphological research (Oskolski et al., 2015) and the review of the Caribbean species (Gutiérrez, 2014) is that the group is solid enough to be treated as one family, Buxaceae s.l.

1 - Minot State University, Biology, 500 University Ave, Minot, ND, 58707, USA
2 - Minot State University, Biology, 500 University Ave W, Minot, ND, 58707

Keywords:
phylogeny
Buxaceae
Buxus
Sarcococca
Pachysandra
Styloceras
Haptanthus
Didymeles.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 45, Monocots part B/Basal Eudicots
Location: 200/Savannah International Trade and Convention Center
Date: Wednesday, August 3rd, 2016
Time: 5:00 PM
Number: 45014
Abstract ID:809
Candidate for Awards:None