Format: ORAL

Monika M. Iskander1, Elizabeth M. Joyce2

1 Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn, Germany 2 Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany

Meliaceae is a widespread angiosperm family of c. 740 species in 58 genera, mainly comprising tropical and subtropical trees. Given its distribution and diversity, Meliaceae is considered a useful lineage for understanding the evolution of tropical forests; however, our understanding of the family’s evolution and infra-familial relationships remain unclear. Here, we present the first genus-complete phylogenies for the family, generated with Angiosperms353 and chloroplast loci, and including 139 taxa with good geographic representation. In the nuclear trees, many relationships were retrieved with maximum support (PP=1, BS=100) and suggest that some genera are non-monophyletic and should be recircumscribed, while some relationships remained poorly supported or conflicted with the topology of the chloroplast phylogeny, particularly in the Melioideae. Analysis and placement of paralogs suggest that this poor resolution is likely caused by a history of hybridisation and genome duplication events. Our results indicate that this may confound our ability to reconstruct relationships in bifurcating trees, raising interesting questions about how we might classify tribes and genera within the family.