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Chloroplast DNA Polymorphism and Phylogeography of a Central African Tree Species Widespread in Mature Rainforests: Greenwayodendron suaveolens (Annonaceae)

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Abstract

Geographic patterns of genetic variation at chloroplast markers have been successfully used to address the phylogeography and the demographic history of many plant species. Very few studies have however been conducted in important tropical centers of plant biodiversity like the African rainforests. The phylogeography of a tree species widespread in Central African mature forests, Greenwayodendron suaveolens subsp. suaveolens (Annonaceae), was investigated in the Lower Guinea phytogeographic domain (essentially Gabon and Cameroon) by sequencing an intergenic spacer of the chloroplast genome (trnC-petN1R). A total of 11 polymorphic sites, including nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), two insertions/deletions and two inversions, defined 12 haplotypes. The taxon is represented by two sympatric varieties (var. suaveolens and var. gabonica) that carried distinct and relatively divergent haplotypes. These varieties, also well distinguishable morphologically, might therefore represent true biological species. The variety suaveolens, more common and more widespread than the variety gabonica, was represented by ten haplotypes. This taxon showed a weak but statistically significant phylogeographic structure, indicating that two sets of related haplotypes essentially occurred respectively in the northern and the southern hemispheres. These results suggest that the distribution of Greenwayodendron suaveolens subsp. suaveolens, which is currently continuous in the Lower Guinea domain, might have been more fragmented in the past, possibly in relation with Pleistocene forest fragmentation.

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Acknowledgments

GD is a PhD candidate funded by the Belgian Fund for Training to Research in Industry and Agriculture (FRIA). JD and OJH are employed by the National Fund for Scientific Research of Belgium (FNRS), respectively as Postdoctoral Researcher and Research Associate. JD was also funded by the Gembloux Agricultural University (FUSAGx, Belgium) via the project PPR 10.000. MH acknowledges a Postdoctoral Researcher position of the FNRS and a scientific visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, funded by the EU Synthesys programme (GB-TAF-1305). GD’s field work was financed by FNRS, Communauté française de Belgique and Cassel Fund. Financial and logistic support in Gabon was provided by the Central African Program of the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Wildlife Conservation Society through the Central Africa Regional Program of the Environment (CARPE). This work was funded by the Fonds de la Recherche Collective FRFC-FNRS project 2.4.576.07 and by the IFORA (îles forestières africaines) project, financed by the French ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) under the ANR-BIODIV program. We would like to acknowledge the Missouri Botanical Garden (Central African Program), the CENAREST (Gabon), the Smithsonian Institution (Gabon Biodiversity Program), Prof. Bonaventure Sonké (Université de Yaoundé I, Cameroon) and Prof. Charles Doumenge (CIRAD) for facilitating field work and sample collection. We thank Daniel Geerinck for help in taxonomic issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Evolutionary Biology and Ecology CP 160/12, Faculté des Sciences, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Av. F.D. Roosevelt, 50, 1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Gilles Dauby, Jérôme Duminil, Myriam Heuertz & Olivier J. Hardy

  2. Laboratoire de Foresterie des Régions tropicales et subtropicales. Unité de Gestion des Ressources forestières et des Milieux naturels, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech. Université de Liège, Passage des Déportés, 2, 5030, Gembloux, Belgium

    Jérôme Duminil

  3. Department of Biodiversity and Conservation, Real Jardín Botánico, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Plaza de Murillo, 2, 28014, Madrid, Spain

    Myriam Heuertz

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  1. Gilles Dauby
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  2. Jérôme Duminil
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  3. Myriam Heuertz
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  4. Olivier J. Hardy
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Correspondence to Gilles Dauby.

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Communicated by: Christopher Dick

DNA sequences presented in this paper have been deposited with the Genebank/EMBL libraries under accession numbers: GU121907-GU121918

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Supplementary material

Sampled populations of Greenwayodendron suaveolens and their cpDNA haplotypes composition. Geographic coordinates are given in decimal degrees (minus sign for southern hemisphere). (DOC 82 kb)

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Dauby, G., Duminil, J., Heuertz, M. et al. Chloroplast DNA Polymorphism and Phylogeography of a Central African Tree Species Widespread in Mature Rainforests: Greenwayodendron suaveolens (Annonaceae). Tropical Plant Biol. 3, 4–13 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12042-010-9041-6

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