WALLICK, KYLE1, WAYNE ELISENS1*, PAUL KORES2, and MIA MOLVRAY3. 1Department of Botany & Microbiology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019; 2Oklahoma Biological Survey, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019; 3Department of Botany & Microbiology and Oklahoma Biological Survey, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019. - Phylogenetic analysis of trnL-F sequence variation indicates a monophyletic Buddlejaceae and a paraphyletic Buddleia.
Recent molecular investigations of Buddlejaceae s. str. confirmed
close phylogenetic relationships among Buddleia, Emorya,
Nicodemia, and Gomphostigma and to certain groups within
Scrophulariaceae and Lamiales. Buddleia is the largest genus
within Buddlejaceae. Although Buddleia has over 90 species
distributed in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, only two species have
been examined using molecular data. To further test the monophyly of
Buddlejaceae and to elucidate phylogenetic relationships among species
of Buddleia and segregate genera, we examined nucleotide
variation from the trnL-F region of the plastid genome among 23
species of Buddleia, two species of Nicodemia, one
species each from Emorya and Gomphostigma, and eight
outgroup taxa. From an aligned length of 1029 bp, exclusion of gaps
resulted in 778 sites and 79 informative characters. Seven indels
were identified as parsimony informative when treated as binary
characters. Maximum parsimony analyses of the combined data yielded 12
most parsimonious trees (length 419, CI = 0.969) after successive
weighting. Our results indicated strong support for: 1) a
monophyletic Buddlejaceae s. str. (bootstrap = 100, d = 8) comprising
species placed in Buddleia, Emorya, Nicodemia,
and Gomphostigma; 2) a paraphyletic Buddleia; 3)
exclusion of Nuxia from Buddejaceae; and 4) sister group status
for the South African genus Teedia to Buddlejaceae (bootstrap =
100, d = 7). Within Buddleia and segregates, there was strong
support for a clade made up of Asiatic species of Buddleia +
Nicodemia + Gomphostigma + Emorya. African and
most New World species were less resolved but formed a weakly
supported clade. Within the trnL-F region, there were higher
substitution rates in the IGS region compared to the trnL
intron. Comparisons among five ingroup species with sequence data
from nrDNA ITS and cpDNA trnL-F indicated that the
trnL-F region had higher proportions of informative nucleotide
substitutions and informative indels.
Key words: Buddleia, Buddlejaceae, trnL-F