RESEARCH ARTICLE Sex Distribution of Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) in the Pacific Johany Peñailillo1, Gabriela Olivares1, Ximena Moncada2, Claudia Payacán1, Chi-Shan Chang3, Kuo-Fang Chung4, Peter J. Matthews5, Andrea Seelenfreund6, Daniela Seelenfreund1* 1 Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular, Facultad de Ciencias Químicas y Farmacéuticas, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile, 2 Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas (CEAZA), La Serena, Chile, 3 National Museum of Prehistory, Taitung 95060, Taiwan, 4 Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Nangang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan, 5 National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan, 6 Escuela de Antropología, Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano, Santiago, Chile a11111 *
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[email protected] Abstract Background OPEN ACCESS Paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) L'Hér. ex Vent) is a dioecious tree native to Citation: Peñailillo J, Olivares G, Moncada X, East Asia and mainland Southeast-Asia, introduced prehistorically to Polynesia as a source Payacán C, Chang C-S, Chung K-F, et al. (2016) Sex of bark fiber by Austronesian-speaking voyagers. In Oceania, trees are coppiced and har- Broussonetia Distribution of Paper Mulberry ( vested for production of bark-cloth, so flowering is generally unknown. A survey of botanical papyrifera) in the Pacific. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0161148. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0161148 records of paper mulberry revealed a distributional disjunction: the tree is apparently absent in Borneo and the Philippines. A subsequent study of chloroplast haplotypes linked paper Editor: Kenneth M Olsen, Washington University, UNITED STATES mulberry of Remote Oceania directly to a population in southern Taiwan, distinct from known populations in mainland Southeast-Asia.