Data for: Phylogenomics of Aralia sect. Aralia (Araliaceae)

Genome-scale data have significantly increased the number of informative
characters for phylogenetic analyses and recent studies have also revealed
widespread phylogenomic discordance in many plant lineages. Aralia sect.
Aralia is a small plant lineage (14 spp.) of the ginseng family Araliaceae
with a disjunct distribution between eastern Asia (11 spp.) and North
America (3 spp.). We herein employ sequences of hundreds of nuclear loci
and the complete plastomes using targeted sequence capture and genome
skimming to reconstruct the phylogenetic and biogeographic history of this
section. We detected substantial conflicts among nuclear genes, yet
different analytical strategies generated largely congruent topologies
from the nuclear data. Significant cytonuclear discordance was detected,
especially concerning the positions of the three North American species.
The phylogenomic results support two intercontinental disjunctions: (1)
Aralia californica of western North America is sister to the eastern Asian
clade consisting of A. cordata and A. continentalis in the nuclear tree,
and (2) the eastern North American A. racemosa forms a clade with A.
bicrenata from southwestern North America, and the North American A.
racemosa - A. bicrenata clade is then sister to the eastern Asian clade
consisting of A. glabra (Japan), A. fargesii (C China), and A. apioides
and A. atropurpurea (the Hengduan Mountains). Aralia cordata is supported
to be disjunctly distributed in Japan, Taiwan, the Ulleung island of
Korea, and in Central, Southwest and South China, and Aralia continentalis
is redefined with a narrower distribution in Northeast China, eastern
Russia and peninsular Korea.