EVOLUTION OF INFLORESCENCES AND ORNITHOPHILY IN THE PIMENTA GROUP (MYRTEAE, MYRTACEAE)

NADRA, MARIA GABRIELA; ACOSTA, JUAN MANUEL; GIANNINI, NORBERTO; AAGESEN, LONE

CABA

Congreso; XXXV Annual Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society; 2016

Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ?Bernardino Rivadavia? (MACN)

Ornithophily has evolved several times among flowering plants, characterized by a passive transferring ofpollen and by offering a reward primarily in the form of nectar. The use of floral structures as a reward toattract birds is less common among flowering plants. In South America there are several examples of thisphenomenon among these three well documented examples of plants that have developed fleshy andsweet petals, to attract frugivorous birds. Two of these cases are found in myrtle species placed in theinformal group ?Pimenta? (tribe Myrteae,Myrtaceae): Acca and Myrrhinium.The phylogenetic placement of Myrrhinium has never been tested. However, because the development offloral structures as a pollination reward is so infrequent, the most plausible hypothesis is to consider thepresence of fleshy petals a homology. However, other traits such as size and color of the petals as well asthe architecture of the inflorescences differ between the species.In this framework, our aims are to obtain a phylogenetic position of Myrrhinium to test the homology offreshly petals in Pimenta and to analyze the evolution of the inflorescence architecture in a phylogeneticcontext.The study is based on nuclear (ITS) and chloroplast (rbcL, ndhF, matK, psbA-trnH) sequences amplifiedfrom own material or obtained from GenBank. Maximun Parsimony (MP) analyses were conducted usingTNT software and Bayesian Inference (BI) using MrBayes software. The morphological studies werebased on fresh material and herbarium material deposited at SI, as well as information obtained from theliterature.