Evolution and Biogeography of Memecylon
RESEARCH ARTICLE Evolution and biogeography of Memecylon Prabha Amarasinghe1,2,3,11 , Sneha Joshi4, Navendu Page5, Lahiru S. Wijedasa6,7, Mary Merello8, Hashendra Kathriarachchi9, Robert Douglas Stone10 , Walter Judd1,2, Ullasa Kodandaramaiah4 , and Nico Cellinese2,3 Manuscript received 6 July 2020; revision accepted 2 December 2020. PREMISE: The woody plant group Memecylon (Melastomataceae) is a large clade 1 Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida occupying diverse forest habitats in the Old World tropics and exhibiting high regional 32611, USA endemism. Its phylogenetic relationships have been previously studied using ribosomal 2 Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, DNA with extensive sampling from Africa and Madagascar. However, divergence times, Gainesville, Florida 32611, USA biogeography, and character evolution of Memecylon remain uninvestigated. We present 3 Biodiversity Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida a phylogenomic analysis of Memecylon to provide a broad evolutionary perspective of this 32611, USA clade. 4 Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, India METHODS: One hundred supercontigs of 67 Memecylon taxa were harvested from target 5 Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India enrichment. The data were subjected to coalescent and concatenated phylogenetic 6 Integrated Tropical Peat Research Program, NUS Environmental analyses. A timeline was provided for Memecylon evolution using fossils and secondary Research Institute (NERI), National University of Singapore, calibration. The calibrated Memecylon phylogeny was used to elucidate its biogeography Singapore 117411 and ancestral character states. 7 ConservationLinks Pvt. Ltd., 100 Commonwealth Crescent, no. 08- 80, Singapore, 140100 RESULTS: Relationships recovered by the phylogenomic analyses are strongly supported 8 Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO, USA in both maximum likelihood and coalescent- based species trees.
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