| Abstract Detail
Systematics Section / ASPT Zimmer, Elizabeth [1], Allan, Gery [2], Wagner, Warren L. [3]. Hawaii as a source area for Pacific Melicope. Oceanic islands have been viewed as natural laboratories for understanding evolutionary diversification. Melicope J. R. & G. Forster (Rutaceae) is a large genus (230 spp.) of shrubs and trees with a distribution ranging from the Malagasy and Indo-Himalayan regions east to the Hawaiian Islands and south to Australia and New Zealand. In the Hawaiian archipelago, the genus has had an explosive radiation, making it one of the largest flowering plant genera (48 spp.) in the islands. Like other Hawaiian radiations (e.g., of the silverswords, and of the genus Schiedea), Melicope has undergone spectacular diversification with species ranging from medium-sized trees up to 12 m in dry to mesic forests, sprawling trees and scandent shrubs of mesic to wet forest, and low-growing shrubs of high elevation bogs. We sequenced DNA from one nuclear (ITS) and three chloroplast (trnLF, trn ET and psbA-trnH) regions from 15 Melicope species representing most of the sections proposed by Hartley, two species of the putatively-related Hawaiian genus Platydesma, and the outgroup species Acronychia. The sequences obtained were analyzed under parsimony, likelihood and Bayesian methods. The phylogenies produced support a Hawaiian Melicope that includes Platydesma relative to outgroup Pacific Melicope from Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand. The results also support at least one instance of Hawaiian Melicope serving as a source area for colonization followed by radiation of species to the Marquesas Islands.
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1 - Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Botany, Museum Support Center, 4210 Silver Hill Road, Suitland, MD, 20746, USA
2 - Northern Arizona University, Biological Sciences Department and Environmental Genetics and Genomics Laboratory, Flagstaff, AZ, USA, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
3 - Smithsonian Institution, Natural History - Botany, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC, 20013-7012
Keywords:
Melicope
ITS sequence
chloroplast DNA
Biogeography
Pacific radiations.
Presentation Type: Poster:Posters for Sections
Session: P
Location: Exhibit Hall (Northeast, Southwest & Southeast)/Hilton
Date: Sunday, July 8th, 2007
Time: 8:00 AM
Number: P59078
Abstract ID:2339 |
