Taxonomic status and phylogeny of Emphasis Type="

Authors: Jin Ohk Kim Minoru N Tamura Shizuka Fuse Nam Sook Lee

Publish Date: 2013/06/27

Volume: 300, Issue: 1, Pages: 75-89

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Abstract

Veratrum section Veratrum comprises eight species in Korea and Japan V alpestre V dahuricum V dolichopetalum V grandiflorum var maximum V oxysepalum V patulum V stamineum var micranthum and V stamineum var stamineum However species delimitation and taxonomic treatments have long been controversial due to their highly variable vegetative and floral morphology We conducted maximum parsimony MP and Bayesian inference BI based on a total of 4856 base pairs of nrDNA ITS and cpDNA coding and noncoding regions matK psbAtrnH rpL16 and trnSG to reexamine the taxonomic status and phylogenetic relationships within Veratrum sect Veratrum The MP and BI trees were poorly resolved among species within Veratrum sect Veratrum in Korea and Japan Veratrum stamineum which has outward spreading exerted stamens beyond the tepals diverged first within Veratrum and the remaining species which have straight shorter stamens compared to the tepals formed a monophyletic group with poor species delimitation and phylogenetic relationships among them The incongruent phylogenetic position of V grandiflorum var maximum between ITS and cpDNA it shares its most recent common ancestor with poorly resolved sect Veratrum species in ITS whereas it is sister to V stamineum in cpDNA suggested that it represents possible ancient hybrid origin between V stamineum and V oxysepalum Thus in this study we elevated the taxonomic status of V grandiflorum var maximum to the species rank V maximum V alpestre which was described as a new species by Nakai in 1937 has identical ribotype and cpDNA haplotype of V oxysepalum and its morphological variations are within the range of V oxysepalum Therefore we suggest that V alpestre should be synomized with V oxysepalum A further study using fast evolving nuclear and chloroplast regions is required to resolve the phylogenetic relationships among species within Veratrum sect VeratrumThis study was supported as a joint research project under the Korea–Japan Basic Scientific Cooperation Program of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation Grant KOSEF200505171 and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS We thank Dr Mark S Roh of the USDA and Holden Arboretum for samples and Dr SeungChul Kim of SungKyunKwan University for critical reading

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