Burseraceae: a model for studying the Amazon flora

Abstract

A well-studied group of plants can serve as a model for addressing issues in conservation, evolution, and biogeography, making it possible to assign conservation status with confidence and detecting not only those taxa that are most threatened but also those that represent basal, unique, and/or relictual members of entire lineages. Clarified higher-level phylogenetic relationships open the door to more refined systematics of clades without having to worry if they are para- or polyphyletic. A well-studied group can also be an excellent testing ground for new or under-utilized tools and independent data sets. Research on the Burseraceae, with over 100 taxa in the Amazon, is rapidly arriving at the point where the family can be used effectively both as a tool for conservation and as a model for studying the processes influencing the origin and maintenance of high diversity in the Amazonian flora. First, we are resolving higher-level phylogenies as well as species-level taxonomy in various clades, allowing comparative approaches. Second, the family occurs throughout Amazonia and is well-represented in most habitats overall, but most of the taxa are restricted in their distributions and/or habitats; this makes it possible to test the relative importance of geographic barriers vs. habitat diversity in the speciation process. The family is sufficiently large to provide adequate statistical power for hypothesis testing and yet small enough to achieve the necessary sampling intensity, allowing us to assess the relative impacts of morphological innovation, ecological opportunity, and biogeographic events on the diversification of Burseraceae and related groups.

Leaf Transcriptome Assembly of Protium copal (Burseraceae) and Annotation of Terpene Biosynthetic Genes

“…Although Burseraceae is distributed throughout tropical and subtropical regions of the world, currently available transcriptomic information is limited to, Boswellia (frankincense) occurring in Asia and Africa, and Bursera (linaloe) occurring in Central America [31]. Here, we generate the first transcriptome annotation of Protium , a remarkable genus that is pantropical but harbors over 170 plant species in the Neotropics [32,33]. Protium is globally known for the aromatic and medicinal properties of resins and essential oils [9].…”

The importance of environmental heterogeneity and spatial distance in generating phylogeographic structure in edaphic specialist and generalist tree species of Protium (Burseraceae) across the Amazon Basin

“…One advantage of our study system is that all individuals sampled can be put safely into a broader phylogenetic context, given that we are currently amassing all Protieae samples for a large phylogenetic study (Fine et al. , 2005; Daly et al. , in press).…”

Cangas da Amazônia: a vegetação única de Carajás evidenciada pela lista de fanerógamas

“…Widely distributed in the Amazon, Gnetum nodiflorum, the only gymnosperm species found in the canga until the present moment was found in forest groves over canga in Carajás. Some angiosperm families not recorded in the QF have their diversity centre in the Amazon biome, such as Chrysobalanaceae, Burseraceae, Costaceae, Combretaceae, Marantaceae (Daly et al 2012;Stace 2010;Costa et al 2011).…”