Historical biogeography of the mistletoe genus Tristerix (Loranthaceae)

The Andean uplift is strongly related to organism diversification and this topic has been studied in several plant taxa. Tristerix (Loranthaceae) is a mistletoe genus of 13 species, distributed from northern to southern Andes and adjacent areas. Phylogenetic relationships of the genus have been proposed but the biogeographic history has not been analysed yet. In this study, we performed phylogenetic analyses, divergence time estimation and ancestral area reconstruction, based on chloroplast and nuclear DNA sequences from Tristerix and other taxa from the Tribe Psittacantheae, with the purpose of understanding the historical biogeography of the genus, under the hypothesis that the Andean uplift process was an influential factor for the genus diversification. Results suggest that Tristerix originated in the southern Andes during the Eocene and then it expanded its distribution to Central Andes, where it diversified into two lineages during the Early Oligocene: The Central-South Clade and the Central-North Clade diversified in the Early and Middle Miocene, respectively. Climatic and geological events related to Andean orogeny coincide with diversification events in the genus.