Tropical Asian Origin, boreotropical migration and long-distance dispersal in Nettles (Urticeae, Urticaceae)

Xianhan Huang; Tao Deng; Michael J Moore; Hengchang Wang; Zhimin Li; Nan Lin; Ziyoviddin Yusupov; Komiljon Sh Tojibaev; Yuehua Wang; Hang Sun

doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2019.05.007

Tropical Asian Origin, boreotropical migration and long-distance dispersal in Nettles (Urticeae, Urticaceae)

Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2019 Aug:137:190-199. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2019.05.007. Epub 2019 May 15.

Authors

Xianhan Huang¹, Tao Deng², Michael J Moore³, Hengchang Wang⁴, Zhimin Li⁵, Nan Lin⁶, Ziyoviddin Yusupov⁷, Komiljon Sh Tojibaev⁸, Yuehua Wang⁹, Hang Sun¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, China.
² Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China. Electronic address: dengtao@mail.kib.ac.cn.
³ Department of Biology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, United States.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
⁵ School of Life Sciences, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China.
⁷ Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁸ Central Herbarium of Uzbekistan, Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan.
⁹ School of Life Sciences, Yunnan University, Kunming, China. Electronic address: wangyh58212@126.com.
¹⁰ Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China. Electronic address: sunhang@mail.kib.ac.cn.

PMID: 31102687
DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2019.05.007

Abstract

The tribe Urticeae (Urticaceae), popularly known as Nettles, include 12 genera and ca. 200 species, constituting a diverse and cosmopolitan plant clade centered in tropical Asia, Africa, and South America. The global distribution of this clade makes it an excellent group to test hypotheses regarding the processes underlying tropical intercontinental disjunctions. More specifically, it allows us to test whether current distribution patterns resulted from recent transoceanic long-distance dispersal or ancient vicariance after boreotropical migration. We reconstructed the phylogeny of Nettles with the nuclear ITS and four plastid DNA regions (rbcL, trnL-F, matK and rpl14-rpl36) using Bayesian inference and maximum parsimony approaches. We inferred divergence times using a Bayesian uncorrelated lognormal relaxed molecular clock model and ancestral areas using the divergence-extinction-cladogenesis (DEC) model. Our results indicate a tropical Asian origin for the tribe during the late Paleocene. Migration events to Eurasia, South America and Africa occurred mainly during the Oligocene and Miocene. However, several long-distance dispersal events, including dispersals from Asia to Hawaii or Australasia, were inferred to have occurred from the Miocene onwards. The fleshy fruits and winged diaspores of several taxa are suited for long-distance dispersal.

Keywords: Boreotropics; Dispersal; Historical biogeography; Tropical Asia origin; Urticeae; Vicariance.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Asia
Bayes Theorem
Phylogeny
Phylogeography
Seed Dispersal / physiology*
Time Factors
Tropical Climate
Urticaceae / physiology*