Journal of Systematics JSE and Evolution doi: 10.1111/jse.12479 Research Article Plastomes of Betulaceae and phylogenetic implications † † Xiao-Yue Yang1 , Ze-Fu Wang2 , Wen-Chun Luo1, Xin-Yi Guo2, Cai-Hua Zhang1, Jian-Quan Liu1,2, and Guang-Peng Ren1* 1State Key Laboratory of Grassland Agro-Ecosystem, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China 2Key Laboratory of Bio-Resource and Eco-Environment of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610000, China † These authors contributed equally to this work. *Author for correspondence. E-mail:
[email protected] Received 4 July 2018; Accepted 16 November 2018; Article first published online31 xx December Month 2019 2018 Abstract Betulaceae is a well-defined family of Fagales, including six living genera and more than 160 modern species. Species of the family have high ecological and economic value for the abundant production of wood. However, phylogenetic relationships within Betulaceae have remained partly unresolved, likely due to the lack of a sufficient number of informative sites used in previous studies. Here, we re-investigate the Betulaceae phylogeny with whole chloroplast genomes from 24 species (17 newly assembled), representing all genera of the family. All the 24 plastomes are relatively conserved with four regions, and each genome is 158–161 kb long, with 111 genes. The six genera are all monophyletic in the plastome tree, whereas Ostrya Scop. is nested in the Carpinus clade in the internal transcribed spacer tree. Further incongruencies are also detected within some genera between species. Incomplete lineage sorting and/or hybrid introgression during the diversification of the family could account for such incongruencies.