| Autor: |
Zhang Y; Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Heilongtan, Kunming 650201, China.; College of Life Science, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu 241000, China., Clancy J; Department of Biology, Brigham Young University, 4102 Life Science Building, Provo, UT 84602, USA., Jensen J; Department of Biology, Brigham Young University, 4102 Life Science Building, Provo, UT 84602, USA., McMullin RT; Canadian Museum of Nature, Research and Collections, Ottawa, ON K1P 6P4, Canada., Wang L; Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Heilongtan, Kunming 650201, China., Leavitt SD; Department of Biology, M. L. Bean Life Science Museum, Brigham Young University, 4102 Life Science Building, Provo, UT 84602, USA. |
| Abstrakt: |
Robust species delimitations provide a foundation for investigating speciation, phylogeography, and conservation. Here we attempted to elucidate species boundaries in the cosmopolitan lichen-forming fungal taxon Lecanora polytropa . This nominal taxon is morphologically variable, with distinct populations occurring on all seven continents. To delimit candidate species, we compiled ITS sequence data from populations worldwide. For a subset of the samples, we also generated alignments for 1209 single-copy nuclear genes and an alignment spanning most of the mitochondrial genome to assess concordance among the ITS, nuclear, and mitochondrial inferences. Species partitions were empirically delimited from the ITS alignment using ASAP and bPTP. We also inferred a phylogeny for the L. polytropa clade using a four-marker dataset. ASAP species delimitations revealed up to 103 species in the L. polytropa clade, with 75 corresponding to the nominal taxon L. polytropa . Inferences from phylogenomic alignments generally supported that these represent evolutionarily independent lineages or species. Less than 10% of the candidate species were comprised of specimens from multiple continents. High levels of candidate species were recovered at local scales but generally with limited overlap across regions. Lecanora polytropa likely ranks as one of the largest species complexes of lichen-forming fungi known to date. |
