Phylogeography of Orinus (Poaceae), a dominant grass genus on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 186, Issue 2, 25 January 2018, Pages 202–223, https://doi.org/10.1093/botlinnean/box091

Author
Yu-Ping Liu Zhu-Mei Ren Aj Harris Paul M Peterson Jun Wen Xu Su

Abstract

To better understand the responses of arid-adapted, alpine plants to Quaternary climatic oscillations, we investigated the genetic variation and phylogeographic history of Orinus, an endemic genus of Poaceae comprising three species from the dry grasslands of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) in China. We measured the genetic variation of 476 individuals from 88 populations using three maternally inherited plastid DNA markers (matK, rbcL and psbA-trnH), the biparentally inherited nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (nrITS) and amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). We found that the plastid DNA, nrITS and AFLPs show considerable, recent differentiation among the species. We detected 14 plastid haplotypes (H1–H14), of which only three were shared among all species, and 30 nrITS ribotypes (S1–S30), of which one (S10) was shared between two species, O. kokonoricus and O. intermedius, but absent in O. thoroldii. The nrITS types formed clades that were inconsistent with species boundaries. Based on these data, we propose and illustrate a complex hypothesis for the evolutionary history of Orinus involving lineage sorting and introgression, the latter of which may explain the shared S10 nrITS type. The AFLP results showed clades corresponding to current species delineation and suggest that lineage sorting in the genus is probably complete. We estimated the crown age of Orinus to be 2.85 (95% highest posterior density: 0.58–12.45) Mya (late Pliocene), and subsequent divergence occurred in the Quaternary. Early divergences were allopatric. More recently, Orinus probably underwent regional expansions corresponding to Quaternary climatic changes, especially glaciation, which is consistent with our divergence time estimates. These climatic changes could have facilitated the S10 event and other hybridization events. Our data also suggest that species of this small genus of grasses survived the Quaternary glacial period in the extremely adverse habitats of the QTP.

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