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Genetic diversity in the Andes: variation within and between the South American species of Oreobolus R. Br. (Cyperaceae)

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Abstract

This study examines genetic relationships among and within the South American species of Oreobolus that span the temperate and tropical Andes hotspots and represent a good case study to investigate diversification in the Páramo. A total of 197 individuals covering the distributional range of most of these species were sequenced for the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and 118 individuals for three chloroplast DNA regions (trnL-F, trnH-psbA and rpl32-trnL). Haplotype networks and measures of genetic diversity were calculated at different taxonomic and geographic levels. To test for possible geographic structure, a spatial analysis of molecular variance (SAMOVA) was undertaken and species relationships were recovered using a coalescent-based approach. Results indicate complex relationships among the five South American species of Oreobolus, which are likely to have been confounded by incomplete lineage sorting, though hybridization cannot be completely discarded as an influence on genetic patterns, particularly among the northern populations of O. obtusangulus and O. cleefii. We report a case of cryptic speciation in O. obtusangulus where northern and southern populations of morphologically similar individuals are genetically distinct in all analyses. At the population level, the genetic evidence is consistent with contraction and expansion of islands of Páramo vegetation during the climatic fluctuations of the Quaternary, highlighting the role of these processes in shaping modern diversity in that ecosystem.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by a School of Biological Sciences Scholarship provided through The University of Edinburgh. We thank the herbaria at Aarhus University, (Denmark), Naturalis (The Netherlands) and Reading University (Great Britain) for making material available for DNA extraction. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and James Nicholls from The University of Edinburgh for assistance with the *BEAST analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tropical Diversity Section, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, UK

    María Camila Gómez-Gutiérrez, R. Toby Pennington, Linda E. Neaves & James E. Richardson

  2. Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Daniel Rutherford Building, The King’s Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3BF, UK

    María Camila Gómez-Gutiérrez & Richard I. Milne

  3. Department Geography, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK

    R. Toby Pennington

  4. Australian Centre for Wildlife Genomics, Australian Museum Research Institute, Australian Museum, 1 William Street, Sydney, 2010, Australia

    Linda E. Neaves

  5. Laboratorio de Botánica y Sistemática, Departamento de Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad de los Andes, Carrera 1 No. 18A-10, Bogotá, Colombia

    Santiago Madriñán

  6. Programa de Biología, Universidad del Rosario, Carrera 26 No. 63B-48, Bogotá, Colombia

    James E. Richardson

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  1. María Camila Gómez-Gutiérrez
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  3. Linda E. Neaves
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  4. Richard I. Milne
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Contributions

MCGG and JER devised the project. LEN assisted with data analyses. MCGG drafted the text, with substantial contributions by JER, RTP and LEN. All authors contributed to final editing.

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Correspondence to James E. Richardson.

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Electronic supplementary material

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35_2017_192_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. 1 MST and distribution of ITS haplotypes. Numbers refer to haplotypes listed in Supplementary Table 5. Haplotypes are coloured according to species. Shared haplotypes are shown in white. Detail of species sharing haplotypes is given in Fig. 3. Hypothetical haplotypes are represented by filled black circles. Letters on the map refer to clusters as described in Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 3. Pie charts are proportional to sample size for each cluster (N = 1 – 34). Numbers next to each segment refer to haplotype number. NA: northern Andes, SA: southern Andes (PDF 1760 kb)

35_2017_192_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. 2 MST and distribution of cpDNA (trnL-F, trnH-psbA and rpl32-trnL) haplotypes. Numbers refer to haplotypes listed in Supplementary Table 6. Haplotypes are coloured according to species. Shared haplotypes are shown in white. Detail of species sharing haplotypes is given in Fig. 5. Hypothetical haplotypes are represented by filled black circles, numbers within indicate their number when more than one. Letters on the map refer to clusters as described in Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 3. Pie charts are proportional to sample size for each cluster (N = 1 – 25). Numbers next to each segment refer to haplotype number. NA: northern Andes, SA: southern Andes (PDF 1769 kb)

35_2017_192_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. 3 NeighborNet network showing genetic relatedness amongst the South American species of Oreobolus based on ITS FST pairwise values considering (a) O. obtusangulus as one species (b) O. obtusangulus as two species (PDF 16 kb)

35_2017_192_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Fig. 4 NeighborNet network showing genetic relatedness amongst the South American species of Oreobolus based on cpDNA (trnL-F, trnH-psbA and rpl32-trnL) FST pairwise values considering (a) O. obtusangulus as one species (b) O. obtusangulus as two species (PDF 15 kb)

Supplementary material 5 (DOCX 153 kb)

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Gómez-Gutiérrez, M.C., Pennington, R.T., Neaves, L.E. et al. Genetic diversity in the Andes: variation within and between the South American species of Oreobolus R. Br. (Cyperaceae). Alp Botany 127, 155–170 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00035-017-0192-z

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