Molecular differentiation and phylogenetic relationship of the genus Punica (Punicaceae) with other taxa of the order Myrtales
D. Narzary, Ranade S.A., Divakar P.K. & T.S. Rana
Published on : 24-Jan-2022
DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.22244/rheedea.2016.26.01.06
DownloadAbstract
Phylogenetic analyses were carried out in two species of Punica L. (P. granatum L. and P. protopunica Balf.f.), and twelve closely related taxa of the order Myrtales based on sequence of the Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) and the 5.8S coding region of the nuclear ribosomal DNA. All the accessions of the Punica grouped into a distinct clade with strong support in Bayesian, Maximum Likelihood and Maximum Parsimony analyses. Trapaceae showed the most distant relationship with other members of Lythraceae s.l. Phylogenetic tree exclusively generated for 42 representative taxa of the family Lythraceae s.l., revealed similar clustering pattern of Trapaceae and Punicaceae in UPGMA and Bayesian trees. All analyses strongly supported the monophyly of the family Lythraceae s.l., nevertheless, the sister relation with family Onagraceae is weakly supported. The analyses of the ITS sequences of Punica in relation to the other taxa of the family Lythraceae s.l., revealed that the genus Punica is distinct under the family Lythraceae, however this could be further substantiated with comparative sequencing of other phylogenetically informative regions of chloroplast and nuclear DNA.
