Abstract Detail

Biogeography

Moore, Michael J. [1], Douglas, Norman [1], Hernández Ledesma, Patricia [2], Flores Olvera, Hilda [2], Ochoterena, Helga [2], Bruenn, Riva [3], Brunner, Anna [1], Drummond, Chloe [4], Last, Noah [1], Leatherman, Lila S.T. [5], Mandala, Venkata Shiva [1], Mostow, Rebecca [1].

Rare plastome structural changes illuminate demography and dispersal across a gypsum archipelago.

Anulocaulis (Nyctaginaceae) is a small genus of five species, two of which (A. leiosolenus and A. reflexus) are long-lived herbaceous perennials that are almost entirely endemic to gypsum in southwestern North America. Anulocaulis leisololenus is comprised of four described varieties that have a highly patchy distribution, occurring in the northern Chihuahuan Desert but also disjunct in small populations in central Arizona and along the Colorado River east of Las Vegas and in the Grand Canyon. This remarkable genus has been the focus of study in our lab for the past several years, and we have assembled a large data set of ITS and several plastid loci for the majority of known populations of gypsum endemic Anulocaulis. We have also recently used hyb-seq to generate sequences of several hundred nuclear loci, as well as complete plastome and nuclear ribosomal cistron sequences, for 12 representative accessions of gypsum Anulocaulis. Plastome assembly has revealed highly unusual plastome structural changes in two populations of this group: populations of A. leiosolenus var. lasianthus in the Big Bend region of Texas have completely lost two nonadjacent genes (ndhF and ndhG) and experienced a 1 kb expansion of the inverted repeat (IR), whereas populations of A. leiosolenus var. leiosolenus from central Arizona have experienced a dramatic contraction of the IR to a length of ~3 kb. The implications of these structural changes for historical demography and dispersal, as well as taxon boundaries, in gypsum Anulocaulis will be discussed, in combination with fruit and flower morphology and gene tree incongruence among loci.

Related Links:
Chihuahuan Desert Gypsum Endemism

1 - Oberlin College, Department of Biology, 119 Woodland St., Oberlin, OH, 44074, USA
2 - Instituto De Biologia, UNAM, Depto Botánica, Apdo.Postal 70-367, Mexico, DF, 04510, Mexico
3 - University of California at Berkeley, Plant and Microbial Biology, 431 Koshland Hall , Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
4 - University of Wisconsin Madison, Department of Botany, 430 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI, 53706, USA
5 - Bureau of Land Management, Great Basin Institute, 440 West 200 South, Suite 500, Salt Lake City, UT, 84101, USA

Keywords:
gypsum endemism
Nyctaginaceae
Chihuahuan Desert
long-distance dispersal
plastome
Anulocaulis.

Presentation Type: Oral Paper:Papers for Topics
Session: 59
Location: Salon 3/The Shaw Conference Centre
Date: Wednesday, July 29th, 2015
Time: 10:30 AM
Number: 59009
Abstract ID:663
Candidate for Awards:None