Phylogenetics support the description of a new Sichuanese species, Susanne’s Gentian, Gentiana susanneae (Gentianaceae)

The region of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau hosts a remarkable biodiversity, including a plethora of endemics. There, the process of documenting biodiversity is still ongoing, and recently, an unusual plant of Gentiana section Frigida was discovered at Cuopu Lakes (Sichuan, China). Although Flora of China identified these specimens as G. algida based upon unmistakable traits (e.g. corolla colour and length, sessile flowers), it was obvious that the Sichuanese plants strongly differed morphologically from G. algida specimens from Siberia and North America. In order to clarify their relationships, we used an integrative approach, investigating not only morphological traits, but also phylogenetic relationships (based upon plastome and rDNA-cistron), as well as chloroplast structure. Whereas the rDNA-cistron phylogeny was poorly resolved, the plastome phylogeny was well supported in both Bayesian Inference and maximum likelihood analyses. Our findings indicate that the Cuopu Lakes samples of G....

青藏高原区域拥有极为丰富的生物多样性，包含大量特有物种。目前该区域的生物多样性编目工作仍在持续推进，近期科研人员在中国四川错普湖（Cuopu Lakes）发现了一种隶属于龙胆属（Gentiana）Frigida组的罕见植物。尽管《中国植物志》（Flora of China）凭借明确的形态特征（如花冠颜色与长度、无柄花等）将这批标本鉴定为高山龙胆（Gentiana algida），但显而易见，四川种群的形态特征与西伯利亚及北美地区的高山龙胆标本存在显著差异。为明确该类群的分类亲缘关系，本研究采用整合研究方法，不仅对形态性状展开分析，还基于质体基因组（plastome）与核糖体DNA顺反子（rDNA-cistron）构建系统发育关系，并探究了叶绿体结构。尽管核糖体DNA顺反子系统发育树分辨率较低，但质体基因组系统发育在贝叶斯推断（Bayesian Inference）与最大似然（maximum likelihood）分析中均得到了良好支持。本研究结果表明，错普湖的龙胆属样本……