Filogenia molecular preliminar de Scaphosepalum (Orchidaceae: Pleurothallidinae)

Abstract

The orchid genus Scaphosepalum (Orchidaceae: Pleurothallidinae) encompasses 49 species widely or narrowly distributed in biotic sympatry in the montane Neotropical forests, where it reaches its peak of diversity. Scaphosepalum represents an interesting system to investigate speciation patterns. The main goal of this project is to reconstruct the evolutionary history of Scaphosepalum and use the resulting phylogenetic hypothesis to determine if the current sympatric distribution of the species is the result of sympatric or allopatric speciation followed by secondary contact. The preliminary phylogeny presented here is based on novel molecular data obtained from the amplification and sequencing of the combined gene regions ITS, trnL-F, matK, and ycf1. Analyses were performed using Maximum Parsimony (MP), Maximum Likelihood (ML), and Bayesian optimization criteria. All the resulting analyses resulted in similar tree topologies and indicate a strong geographical structure in the dataset.