Phylogenetic reassessment of tribe Anemoneae (Ranunculaceae): Non-monophyly of Anemone s.l. revealed by plastid datasets.

Nan Jiang,Kai-Yun Guan,Zhuang Zhou,Wen-Bin Yu,Shu-Dong Zhang,Yun-Hong Tan,Jun-Bo Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0174792

Abstract

Morphological and molecular evidence strongly supported the monophyly of tribe Anemoneae DC.; however, phylogenetic relationships among genera of this tribe have still not been fully resolved. In this study, we sampled 120 specimens representing 82 taxa of tribe Anemoneae. One nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (nrITS) and six plastid markers (atpB-rbcL, matK, psbA-trnQ, rpoB-trnC, rbcL and rps16) were amplified and sequenced. Both Maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference methods were used to reconstruct phylogenies for this tribe. Individual datasets supported all traditional genera as monophyletic, except Anemone and Clematis that were polyphyletic and paraphyletic, respectively, and revealed that the seven single-gene datasets can be split into two groups, i.e. nrITS + atpB-rbcL and the remaining five plastid markers. The combined nrITS + atpB-rbcL dataset recovered monophyly of subtribes Anemoninae (i.e. Anemone s.l.) and Clematidinae (including Anemoclema), respectively. However, the concatenated plastid dataset showed that one group of subtribes Anemoninae (Hepatica and Anemone spp. from subgenus Anemonidium) close to the clade Clematis s.l. + Anemoclema. Our results strongly supported a close relationship between Anemoclema and Clematis s.l., which included Archiclematis and Naravelia. Non-monophyly of Anemone s.l. using the plastid dataset indicates to revise as two genera, new Anemone s.l. (including Pulsatilla, Barneoudia, Oreithales and Knowltonia), Hepatica (corresponding to Anemone subgenus Anemonidium).

Highlights

Tribe Anemoneae is a member of subfamily Ranunculoideae (Ranunculaceae) [1,2,3,4]
Phylogenetic relationships among genera resulting from of the seven DNA markers analyzed separately using Maximum likelihood (ML) and Bayesian inference (BI) methods are presented in S1 Fig. As for Barneoudia, Knowltonia, and Oreithales only nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (nrITS) and atpB-rbcL sequences were available from GenBank, the three genera were not included in phylogenetic analyses of the other five plastid datasets
The first type included nrITS and atpB-rbcL datasets, which supported the splitting of tribe Anemoneae into two clades, i.e. Clematis s.l. + Anemoclema and Anemone s.l

Summary

Introduction

Tribe Anemoneae is a member of subfamily Ranunculoideae (Ranunculaceae) [1,2,3,4]. This tribe included three subtribes, i.e., Anemoninae, Clematidineae and Kingdoniae. Morphological and molecular evidences show that K. uniflora should be excluded from tribe Anemoneae, even from Ranunculaceae [6], and it has been treated as an independent family Kingdoniaceae, or incorporated into family Circaeasteraceae since 2009 [4, 7]. Excluding K. uniflora, tribe Anemoneae was strongly supported as monophyletic in phylogenetic analyses [4, 8,9,10,11]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion