New Publication - A new nuclear phylogeny of the tea family

Postdoctoral Fellow in the Davis Lab and former HUH Research Fellow, Yujing Yan, and colleagues, have a new publication in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, "A new nuclear phylogeny of the tea family (Theaceae) unravels rapid radiations in genus Camellia." In the study, Yan and colleagues found support for previously proposed relationships within Theaceae, especially among tribes and genera, and clarified some interspecific relationships within the genus Camellia. The study advances our understanding of Theaceae evolution and provides insights into molecular methods for phylogenetic research.

Abstract: Molecular analyses of rapidly radiating groups often reveal incongruence between gene trees. This mainly results from incomplete lineage sorting, introgression, and gene tree estimation error, which complicate the estimation of phylogenetic relationships. In this study, we reconstruct the phylogeny of Theaceae using 348 nuclear loci from 68 individuals and two outgroup taxa. Sequence data were obtained by target enrichment using the recently released Angiosperm 353 universal probe set applied to herbarium specimens. The robustness of the topologies to variation in data quality was established under a range of different filtering schemes, using both coalescent and concatenation approaches. Our results confirmed most of the previously hypothesized relationships among tribes and genera, while clarifying additional interspecific relationships within the rapidly radiating genus Camellia. We recovered a remarkably high degree of gene tree heterogeneity indicative of rapid radiation in the group and observed cytonuclear conflicts, especially within Camellia. This was especially pronounced around short branches, which we primarily associate with gene tree estimation error. Our analysis also indicates that incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) contributed to gene-tree conflicts and accounted for approximately 14 % of the explained variation, whereas inferred introgression levels were low. Our study advances the understanding of the evolution of this important plant family and provides guidance on the application of target capture methods and the evaluation of key processes that influence phylogenetic discordances.

Yujing Yan, Rute R. da Fonseca, Carsten Rahbek, Michael K. Borregaard, Charles C. Davis (2024) A new nuclear phylogeny of the tea family (Theaceae) unravels rapid radiations in genus Camellia. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 196, 108089. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2024.108089