Format: ORAL

Irene Villa-Macho1, Alejandro Quintanar2, Alexander G. Linan1, David Harris3, Patricia Barber1

1- Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis (USA) 2- Real Jardín Botánico – CSIC, Madrid (Spain) 3- Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Edinburgh (United Kingdom)

Tropical ecosystems are recognized as one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth. The odd-man-out pattern proposes that Tropical Africa is less diverse than both Neotropics and Tropical Asia. Although this is true for many vascular plant groups, this is not the case for the pantropical family Putranjivaceae. It is a complex and species-rich group that includes two genera: Putranjiva (4 spp., restricted to Asia) and Drypetes (219 spp.). Asia contains the greatest number of species belonging to Drypetes (113 spp.), followed by Africa (86 spp.) and significantly less in America (20 spp.). The high number of African species recently described indicates that the diversity of Putranjivaceae on this continent has been underestimated. The evolutionary and biogeographical history of the Putranjivaceae has never been studied due to the lack of both an updated taxonomic scheme (the only extant infrageneric classification of Drypetes was published in 1922 by Pax Hoffmann) and a comprehensive phylogeny for the family. Herbaria store vast collections of plant specimens accumulated over several centuries, and recent advances in DNA extraction methods and sequencing techniques allow researchers to include degraded DNA in their studies. We aim to analyze ~200 herbarium specimens, accounting for over 90% of the Putranjivaceae familys diversity, to reconstruct their phylogenomic relationships. Target capture sequencing combined with genome-skimming (HybSeq) is favored due to its compatibility with old herbarium material and ability to produce numerous low-copy nuclear orthologs and organellar DNA. This study will advance understanding of the evolutionary history of Putranjivaceae and demonstrate how a strong phylogenomic hypothesis can inspire and direct future taxonomic research, support species identification and elucidate important inquiries regarding their evolution and biogeography.