Phylogeography and disjunct distribution in Lychnophora ericoides (Asteraceae), an endangered cerrado shrub species

Abstract

The results strongly support that the disjunct distribution of L. ericoides may represent a climatic relict and that long-distance gene flow is unlikely. With an estimated time to most recent common ancestor (T(MRCA)) dated from approx. 790,655 +/- 36,551 years bp (chloroplast) and approx. 623,555 +/- 55,769 years bp (ITS), it was hypothesized that the disjunct distribution may be a consequence of an expansion of the geographical distribution favoured by the drier and colder conditions that prevailed in much of Brazil during the Kansan glaciation, followed by the retraction of the distribution due to the extinction of populations in some areas as climate became warmer and moister.

Recovering the demographical history of a Brazilian Cerrado tree species Caryocar brasiliense: coupling ecological niche modeling and coalescent analyses

“…The vegetation dynamic at fine spatial scales, whose signal is not captured by coarse ENMs, may have caused multiple small refugia of savanna-like vegetation and hence the ancient divergence from the southeastern lineages of C. brasiliense along with highest genetic diversity. In addition, phylogeographical patterns as complex as this reveled for C. brasiliense is also shown for other tree species from Brazilian Cerrado, although not exactly from multiple refugia scenario (Novaes et al 2010;Collevatti et al 2009Collevatti et al , 2012c). …”

Model-based analysis supports interglacial refugia over long-dispersal events in the diversification of two South American cactus species

“…Independent evidences (for example, Prado and Gibbs, 1993;Ledru et al, 1996;Pennington et al, 2004;Collevatti et al, 2009; have been considered to explain the shifts in vegetation dynamics and species diversification due to Quaternary climate oscillations in eastern South America. Although there is no consensus about the extent to which the Pleistocenic climatic fluctuations affected the species distribution and evolution of different groups of organisms (Hewitt, 2004;Werneck et al, 2012;Turchetto-Zolet et al, 2013), it seems clear that the response of each species to climatic fluctuations is related to the dispersal abilities and ecological niches of the particular species (Bonatelli et al, 2014).…”

Diversity of non-glandular trichomes in subtribe Lychnophorinae (Asteraceae: Vernonieae) and taxonomic implications

“…Another species group of challenging identification is composed of L. pinaster and the widespread medicinal L. ericoides, the latter being focus of phytochemical investigations (reviewed in Keles et al 2010) and conservation studies (Collevatti et al 2009;Maia-Almeida et al 2012). Leaf characters and geographical distribution are usually used to distinguish these species (Loeuille 2011;Semir et al 2011), but differences in the trichome complement are especially helpful and straightforward: L. ericoides' indument is composed solely of D1 trichomes, whereas in L. pinaster A2 and D4 trichomes are found.…”