Straight From the Plastome: Molecular Phylogeny and Morphological Evolution of Fargesia (Bambusoideae: Poaceae)

Abstract

Fargesia is ecologically and economically important in mountainous forests. Many Fargesia species are also important sources of food for some endangered animals such as the giant panda. Recent molecular phylogenetic analyses have revealed Fargesia as a polyphyletic group despite some unclear lineage affinities. In the present study, we reconstructed the phylogeny of Fargesia and its allies, including Thamnocalamus, Arundinaria (incl. Bashania ), Yushania, Indocalamus, Ampelocalamus and Phyllostachys , from a plastome sequence matrix that contained 20 Fargesia and five Yushania species as ingroups, 16 species from nine other bamboo genera plus Oryza sativa and Zea mays as outgroups. Fargesia and its allies were broken into eight clades. Several Fargesia species were clustered into the Thamnocalamus clade and the Drepanostachyum + Himalayacalamus clade that rendered the polyphyly of Fargesia . The remaining six clades, including the Fargesia spathe clade, the Phyllostachys clade, Arundinaria fargesii , the Ampelocalamus clade, the Fargesia grossa clade, and the Fargesia macclureana clade, were identified. Molecular phylogenetic analyses supported that Yushania should be included in Fargesia (s.l.) which had synapomorphy of expanded leaf sheaths in varying degree at the basis of inflorescences, and further divided into the Fargesia spathe clade, the Fargesia grossa clade, and the Fargesia macclureana clade. All sampled species of Yushania were nested within the Fargesia grossa clade. The probable model of the origin of the species in the Fargesia spathe clade with spathe-like leaf sheath syndrome was proposed. Moreover, the formation of the spathe-like leaf sheath syndrome may be correlated with cold climatic conditions in Quaternary. Our results provide new sight into the phylogenetic relationship within Fargesia .

Two plastomes of Phyllostachys and reconstruction of phylogenic relationship amongst selected Phyllostachys species using genome skimming

“… 2019 ; Zhou et al. 2019 ). To date, however, only a small amount of complete plastid genomes has been reported for members of Phyllostachys , such as P. propinqua (Wu and Ge 2012 ), P. sulphurea (Gao and Gao 2016 ), P. nigra , and P. edulis (Zhang et al.…”

“…Information from chloroplast genome sequences has been extensively applied in understanding interspecific relationship (Ma et al 2014;Li et al 2019;Zhou et al 2019). To date, however, only a small amount of complete plastid genomes has been reported for members of Phyllostachys, such as P. propinqua (Wu and Ge 2012), P. sulphurea (Gao and Gao 2016), P. nigra, and P. edulis (Zhang et al 2011).…”

Phylogenomics of Fargesia and Yushania reveals a history of reticulate evolution

“…Based on vegetative traits, both Fargesia and Yushania were divided into two sections (Yi, 1986, 1988; Yi et al, 2008). However, the plastome‐based phylogeny in our analyses revealed that these key morphological characters for genus and section delimitation are not objective, as suggested by previous molecular studies (Triplett & Clark, 2010; Zeng et al, 2010; Zhang et al, 2012, 2016, 2018; Attigala et al, 2016; Zhou et al, 2019). From our plastome phylogenetic trees, we inferred that Fargesia initially colonized along the border of Tibet and Yunnan (V‐ Fargesia ‐alpine) with subsequent dispersal to the Qinling mountains (V‐ Fargesia 2), then together with Yushania , spread to mountain areas of the east Himalaya, Hengduan Mountains, and southern China (V‐FY).…”

“…To date, the phylogenetic framework of Arundinarieae has been established by using plastid phylogenomic analyses (Ma et al, 2014, 2017; Attigala et al, 2016). Nevertheless, no study has focused on these two species‐rich genera except Zhou et al (2019), which included 20 plastomes of Fargesia and revealed that Fargesia is a polyphyletic group and divided into eight clades.…”

Two new species of Fargesia (Poaceae, Bambusoideae) from southwestern China

“… Fargesia is a polyphyletic genus and could be divided into three or four clades based on plastome sequences ( Zhang et al 2018 ; Zhou et al 2019 ) and double-digested restriction enzyme-associated DNA sequencing (ddRAD-seq) data ( Ye et al 2019 ). F. viridis was classified as belonging to V- Fargesia 4 clade based on the phylogenetic results of ddRAD-seq analyses ( Ye et al 2019 ), but no conclusion could be made for its position on the plastome phylogeny.…”