Abstract
Michaelmoelleria, a new genus from southern Vietnam is described with a single species, M. vietnamensis. The new genus is morphologically most similar to Deinostigma and Tribounia but it differs from the latter two by having four fertile stamens. Nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and plastid trnL-F intron spacer (trnL-F) DNA sequence data from the new genus and eighty-seven species representing 42 genera within tribe Didymocarpeae are used to resolve its generic placement. The molecular evidence reveals that it is most closely related to Cathayanthe rather than Deinostigma and Tribounia. The chromosome number is counted as 2n = 36 that further clarified its distinction comparing to the related genera within tribe Didymocarpeae. A global conservation assessment is also performed and classifies Michaelmoelleria vietnamensis as Critically Endangered (CR).
Highlights
The Bayesian inference (BI) tree was largely compatible with the best maximum likelihood (ML) tree (Fig. 2)
It possesses small chromosomes, falling in the range from 1.51 to 4.15 μm, and we identified the number of the somatic chromosomes as 2n = 36 (Fig. 3), with two relatively small satellites
In March 2018, a plant having bluish-purple flowers of Gesneriaceae was collected in southern Vietnam
Summary
The generic delimitations in Asian Gesneriaceae are often ambiguous due to significant overlap in characters between genera (Burtt 1977), which has led to many revisions including synonymization of small and monotypic genera (Möller et al 2011a, b; Puglisi et al 2011; Weber et al 2011a, b; Möller et al 2016) and establishment or resurrection of new or previously synonymized genera in recent years (Wei et al 2010; Weber et al 2011c; Middleton and Triboun 2012; Middleton and Möller 2012; Middleton et al 2014, 2015, 2018). Due to the status of uneven collection among the countries within Southeast Asia, Thailand, for example, has an estimate of 75 collections per 100 km (Middleton et al 2019) resulting in species richness and endemics of Gesneriaceae being much higher than those in Vietnam. Fu et al (2019) reported no record of Elatostema from Vietnam’s southernmost provinces and partially ascribed this pattern to unequal sampling effort across the country. They proposed a more significant sampling effort in southern Vietnam
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