BMC Evolutionary Biology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Evolutionary divergence times in the Annonaceae: evidence of a late Miocene origin of Pseuduvaria in Sundaland with subsequent diversification in New Guinea Yvonne CF Su* and Richard MK Saunders* Address: Division of Ecology & Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, PR China Email: Yvonne CF Su* -
[email protected]; Richard MK Saunders* -
[email protected] * Corresponding authors Published: 2 July 2009 Received: 3 March 2009 Accepted: 2 July 2009 BMC Evolutionary Biology 2009, 9:153 doi:10.1186/1471-2148-9-153 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/9/153 © 2009 Su and Saunders; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Phylogenetic analyses of the Annonaceae consistently identify four clades: a basal clade consisting of Anaxagorea, and a small 'ambavioid' clade that is sister to two main clades, the 'long branch clade' (LBC) and 'short branch clade' (SBC). Divergence times in the family have previously been estimated using non-parametric rate smoothing (NPRS) and penalized likelihood (PL). Here we use an uncorrelated lognormal (UCLD) relaxed molecular clock in BEAST to estimate diversification times of the main clades within the family with a focus on the Asian genus Pseuduvaria within the SBC. Two fossil calibration points are applied, including the first use of the recently discovered Annonaceae fossil Futabanthus.