Abstract
The tribe Geonomateae is a widely distributed group of 103 species of Neotropical palms which contains six ecologically important understory or subcanopy genera. Although it has been the focus of many studies, our understanding of the evolutionary history of this group, and in particular of the taxonomically complex genus Geonoma, is far from complete due to a lack of molecular data. Specifically, the previous Sanger sequencing-based studies used a few informative characters and partial sampling. To overcome these limitations, we used a recently developed Arecaceae-specific target capture bait set to undertake a phylogenomic analysis of the tribe Geonomateae. We sequenced 3,988 genomic regions for 85% of the species of the tribe, including 84% of the species of the largest genus, Geonoma. Phylogenetic relationships were inferred using both concatenation and coalescent methods. Overall, our phylogenetic tree is highly supported and congruent with taxonomic delimitations although several morphological taxa were revealed to be non-monophyletic. It is the first time that such a large genomic dataset is provided for an entire tribe within the Arecaceae. Our study lays the groundwork not only for detailed macro- and micro-evolutionary studies within the group, but also sets a workflow for understanding other species complexes across the tree of life.
Highlights
Palms (Arecaceae) are an important ecological component (Henderson, 2002; Couvreur et al, 2011) and a useful plant group of tropical ecosystems (Macia et al, 2011; Gruca et al, 2015)
By employing a large novel set of molecular markers, we were able to clarify both deep and shallow phylogenetic relationships within the tribe Geonomateae including for Geonoma, one of the largest and taxonomically most challenging Neotropical palm genera
The intraspecific sampling confirmed in most cases the validity of the taxonomic delimitation of species proposed by Henderson (2011), even for those with extensive phenotypic variability such as G. cuneata, G. interrupta, G. maxima, G. pinnatifrons, G. macrostachys, or G. stricta
Summary
Palms (Arecaceae) are an important ecological component (Henderson, 2002; Couvreur et al, 2011) and a useful plant group of tropical ecosystems (Macia et al, 2011; Gruca et al, 2015). Ex Scop., Chamaedorea Willd., and Geonoma Willd These three genera are mostly small shade-adapted palms and they contain the most abundant palm species in the understory of many Neotropical forests (Vormisto et al, 2004; Balslev et al, 2016, 2017; Ley-lopez and Avalos, 2017; Muscarella et al, 2018). They often exhibit a high amount of intraspecific phenotypic variation (Roncal, 2006), which is hard to address with a taxonomic classification. The evolutionary history of Geonoma and Geonomateae remains only partially understood due to the paucity of DNA sequences, which so far are available only for three nuclear loci and approximately 60% of the species in the tribe
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