Increasing Taxa Sampling Provides New Insights on the Phylogenetic Relationship Between Eriobotrya and Rhaphiolepis

Zhanghong Dong; Shaohong Qu; Sven Landrein; Wen-Bin Yu; Jing Xin; Wenzhi Zhao; Yu Song; Yunhong Tan; Peiyao Xin

doi:10.3389/fgene.2022.831206

Increasing Taxa Sampling Provides New Insights on the Phylogenetic Relationship Between Eriobotrya and Rhaphiolepis

Front Genet. 2022 Mar 15:13:831206. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2022.831206. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Zhanghong Dong¹, Shaohong Qu¹, Sven Landrein², Wen-Bin Yu², Jing Xin¹, Wenzhi Zhao¹, Yu Song³, Yunhong Tan^{2

4}, Peiyao Xin¹

Affiliations

¹ Southwest Research Center for Landscape Architecture Engineering, National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming, China.
² Center for Integrative Conservation and Horticulture Department, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Ecology of Rare and Endangered Species and Environmental Protection (Ministry of Education), Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, China.
⁴ Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yezin, Myanmar.

Abstract

Eriobotrya (Rosaceae) is an economically important genus with around 30 species. It is widely distributed in tropical and warm temperate regions of Asia, with most of its species in China, Myanmar, and Vietnam. However, Eriobotrya is often confused with the smaller genus Rhaphiolepis, and the phylogenetic relationships between the two genera are controversial. Here we present phylogenetic analyses of 38 newly generated Eriobotrya and Rhaphiolepis nrDNA together with 16 sequences of nrDNA and 28 sequences of ITS obtained from GenBank, representing 28 species of Eriobotrya and 12 species of Rhaphiolepis, in order to reconstruct highly supported relationships for the two genera. Contrary to previous research based on limited sampling, our results highlight the monophyly of Eriobotrya as well as Rhaphiolepis. The topology recovered here is consistent with key morphological synapomorphies such as the persistent sepals in Eriobotrya. Our findings show that increased sampling of taxa can provide a more robust phylogeny through reducing phylogenetic error and increasing overall phylogenetic accuracy.

Keywords: Eriobotrya; ITS; Maleae; Rhaphiolepis; phylogenetic relationships.