Source: SEAMEO BIOTROP's Research Grant | 2011

Abstract:

The Centre supported this PhD thesis research that explored for the first time the phylogenetic relationships
among Endiandra species and between Endiandra and Beilschmiedia. The two genera Endiandra and Beilschmiedia are morphologically very difficult to distinguish when flowers are unavailable. Previous phylogenetic analyses using matK and cpDNA (Rohwer 2000; Chanderbali et al. 2001) have found that Endiandra were nested within Beilschmiedia, however the studies have only incorporated limited samples of Endiandra. The present analysis has accommodated more samples of Endiandra to confirm the position of Endiandra. Additionally, the staminal gland is a good character for grouping within Endiandra species based on morphology.

To know if ITS sequence data also support such grouping, ITS region of twenty eight samples of Endiandra, Beilschmiedia and Cryptocarya were sequenced and in total of 31 taxa, consisted of 19 species of Endiandra, 5 species of Beilschmiedia (as in-groups) and 7 species of Cryptocarya (as outgroups) were analyzed using maximum parsimony method. One of most parsimonious trees suggested that Beilschmiedia cannot be separated from Endiandra which explained the difficulty of distinguishing the two based on morphology. The staminal glands distributed in the lower clades of the tree, left the terminal clade with a group of glandless species with an exception of E. monothyra. Staminal gland is an important character but the grouping based on the present and absence of stamina gland is not supported by ITS data sequence. Improving the resolutions of the cladogram for more reliable interpretations of the species relationships within Endiandra is suggested by adding more samples and introducing more suitable markers.

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