Phylogeny and Taxonomy of Genus Physaria in North America

Physaria is a genus of ~108 species belonging to family Brassicaceae that is predominantly distributed in Western North America, but one species occurs in Arctic Russia and Northern Canada and several species occur in South America. Regardless of the vast number of species in the genus, the genus la...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hettihewa, Binoshi
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: IRL @ UMSL 2023
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Online Access:https://irl.umsl.edu/thesis/439
https://irl.umsl.edu/context/thesis/article/1452/viewcontent/Taxonomy_and_phylogeny_of_genus_Physaria_in_North_America.pdf
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Summary:Physaria is a genus of ~108 species belonging to family Brassicaceae that is predominantly distributed in Western North America, but one species occurs in Arctic Russia and Northern Canada and several species occur in South America. Regardless of the vast number of species in the genus, the genus lacks a well-resolved phylogeny representing many taxa, partially because phylogeny reconstruction is complicated by the fact that many species of Physaria vary in chromosome numbers and ploidy levels. In chapter 1, we review how polyploids are formed and become established and summarize what is known about variation in chromosome number and ploidy in Brassicaceae and in the genus Physaria. In Chapter 2, we extracted DNA representing 84 species of Physaria species and employed a 2b-RAD sequencing technique to generate data for phylogeny reconstruction. The specific goals of the study were 1) to reconstruct the phylogeny of Physaria and assess whether species relationships proposed in early monographs by Payson (1921) and Rollins and Shaw (1973) based on morphology correspond to the current species relationships revealed through the molecular phylogeny representing 86 species of Physaria, 2) to investigate the monophyly of species represented by multiple accessions in the resulting phylogeny, and 3) to investigate how the inclusion of polyploid taxa affects the topology of the phylogeny, which may help shed light on the origins of polyploid taxa. The resulting phylogeny had species from Mexico and Texas at the base of the tree, suggesting that the genus originated in southern North America, although additional outgroups and a formal biogeographic analysis are needed to confirm this result. The species in the phylogeny were grouped into two main clades, one containing species predominantly from eastern North America, and one containing species predominantly from western North America. Except for the group 1 species proposed by Rollins and Shaw in 1973, none of proposed groups of species in monographs formed clades. ...