Molecular phylogeny and biogeography of the SouthAmerican genus Metrodorea (Rutaceae)

Abstract

IntroductionThe South American genus Metrodorea A.St.-Hil. (Rutaceae) comprises 6 species mostly distributed in Brazil, where all species occur, appearing in 17 out of 26 states. Metrodorea flavida K.Krause is the more widespread species, ranging from Suriname and north-central Brazil to Bolivia, throughout the Pantanal biogeographic province in the Amazonian forest, or patches of it, sometimes within other vegetation formations. The remaining five species are distributed mostly in eastern Brazil in Cerrado, Caatinga forest, and Atlantic forest (Figure 1).Metrodorea is unique in the family Rutaceae for its leaf sheath morphology (Engler, 1931;Kaastra, 1982) (see Figure 2), as both sheaths of each pair of opposite leaves stick to each other until the developing terminal bud forces them to separate. Its representatives vary from small shrubs (M. mollis Taub. and M. concinna Pirani & P. Dias) to tall trees (M. flavida and M. stipularis Mart., Figure 2), or both habits within a same species (M. maracasana Kaastra and M. nigra A.St.-Hil.; Kaastra, 1982; pers. observ.); their leaves are sessile (in M. concinna and M. stipularis) or petiolate, and 1-3-foliolate, with leaflets sessile (in M. concinna and M. mollis) or petiolulate, bearing conspicuous (in M. mollis) or inconspicuous glands; their carpels have dorsal apophysis (in M. mollis) or not; and their fruits have densely (in M. flavida, M. maracasana, and M. mollis) or sparsely distributed tubercles (Dias et al., 2013).Taking into account all species of the genus, only M. nigra ("carrapateira", "chupa-ferro" in vernacular Portuguese) has been extensively studied to date, and is one of the species best represented in herbaria. For example, Müller et al. (1995) isolated several compounds from its stems and leaves; Souza et al. ( 2004) studied its flower and fruit anatomy; Pombal and Morellato (2000) investigated the correlation between its floral traits (color and odor) and main pollinators, as compared to M. stipularis; and recent works by Guidugli et al. (2012) and Schwarcz et al. (2010) have been focused on its genetic diversity and structure, and its mating system. In addition, many studies have reported M. nigra as a frequent species in floristic surveys (Durigan et al., 2000;Toniato and Oliveira-Filho, 2004;Santos et al., 2007b), playing an important ecological role in tropical deciduous forests (Metzger, 2000), and also as a key species for forest restoration purposes in this biome (Chagas et al., 2004).

Filogenia, biogeografia e revisão taxonômica de Nycticalanthus Ducke e Spiranthera A.St.-Hil. (Rutaceae, Galipeeae)

“…Na literatura há poucos estudos sobre a morfologia, mesmo que parcial, das espécies dos dois gêneros . Com efeito, apenas recentemente grupos neotropicais de Rutaceae têm sido mais bem amostrados em estudos filogenéticos (e.g., Dias et al 2015;. Entretanto, os gêneros aqui estudados ainda não o foram.…”