Biogeographic connections between continental Africa and Madagascar: Helichrysum (Compositae) as study-case.

This project seeks to investigate the temporal and geographic origins of the genus Helichrysum Mill. (Compositae, Gnaphalieae) in Madagascar. This requires the reconstruction of taxonomically well-sampled and well-resolved phylogenies and the application of complex bioinformatic analyses aimed to infer the temporal origin of the studied group and its biogeographic history in the island. With this purpose, we sampled more an half of the genus (including 60% of the Madagascan endemics) and generated target-enrichment data to build the phylogenies.