Dipteronia

Abstract: Attempts to reconstruct phytogeographic history based exclusively on either modern or fossil distribution patterns may give misleading results. Local extinction within a widespread clade can undermine phylogeographic hypotheses based on modern‐day distribution patterns; e.g., within the Aceroideae, Dipteronia is the sister group to Acer and is presently known only from Asia; the discovery of Dipteronia in the North American Tertiary requires a rethinking of hypotheses based solely on the modern distribution of the two genera. Conversely, the fossil record alone cannot provide a well‐resolved phytogeographic history because the availability of well‐preserved fossils for a particular time interval differs among regions. The most informative method for deducing the phytogeographic history of a given clade is to conduct phylogenetic analyses that include both fossil and extant representatives to deduce the sequence of dispersal and/or vicariance events indicated by the most parsimonious trees. The choice of t...

Abstract: ITS 1 sequences in twenty-eight species of Acer and a species of Dipteronia in the family Aceraceae ranged from 220 to 242 bp and ITS 2 sequences from 215 to 251 bp. The size of the 5.8S coding region was 164 bp for all species examined in the family. Phylogenetic analysis of ITS sequences placed a very robust clade of section Palmata at the base of the tree. Three species of section Parviflora sensu de Jong (1994), A. spicatum, A. distylum and A. nipponicum, did not form a monophyletic clade. Acer spicatum was separated from the robust clade of A. distylum and A. nipponicum. Molecular tree strongly supports the close relationship among section Platanoidea, Glabra series Arguta, and section Macrantha. The close relationship between sections Pentaphylla and Trifoliata was also strongly suggested in ITS tree. Sections Rubra and Hyptiocarpa appeared to be closely allied with each other. The average rate of nucleotide substitution was estimated as (8.0±1.9)×10−11 substitutions per site per year for ITS 1 and (9.0±1.6) ×10−11 for ITS 2.

Abstract: Dipteronia (order Sapindales) is an endangered genus endemic to China and has two living species, D. sinensis and D. dyeriana. The plants are closely related to the genus Acer, which is also classified in the order Sapindales. Evolutionary studies on Dipteronia have been hindered by the paucity of information on their genomes and plastids. Here, we used next generation sequencing to characterize the transcriptomes and complete chloroplast genomes of both Dipteronia species. A comparison of the transcriptomes of both species identified a total of 7,814 orthologs. Estimation of selection pressures using Ka/Ks ratios showed that only 30 of 5,435 orthologous pairs had a ratio significantly greater than 1, i.e., showing positive selection. However, 4,041 orthologs had a Ka/Ks < 0.5 (p < 0.05), suggesting that most genes had likely undergone purifying selection. Based on orthologous unigenes, 314 single copy nuclear genes were identified. Through a combination of de novo and reference guided assembly, plastid genomes were obtained; that of D. sinensis was 157,080 bp and that of D. dyeriana was 157,071 bp. Both plastid genomes encoded 87 protein coding genes, 40 tRNAs, and 8 rRNAs; no significant differences were detected in the size, gene content, and organization of the two plastomes. We used the whole chloroplast genomes to determine the phylogeny of D. sinensis and D. dyeriana and confirmed that the two species were highly divergent. Overall, our study provides comprehensive transcriptomic and chloroplast genomic resources, which will be valuable for future evolutionary studies of Dipteronia.