Estimating the Phylogenetic Diversity of Floras: an example from the Huachuca Mountains of Arizona and the White Mountains of California
Lipka, Carrie A.1; Sanderson, Michael J.2; and Wojciechowski, Martin F.1
1School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ; 2Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ
The conservation of biological diversity depends on estimating as well as preserving patterns of variation in nature. One way of identifying patterns of variation among species is at the level of molecular variation (genetic). Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is an index used to measure this variation or “feature diversity”. This index is implemented by creating a phylogenetic tree based on this feature for a set of species; the minimum sum of the feature that span all the species in the set is the calculated PD. In our study we are investigating the Phylogenetic Diversity of all species in the flowering plant families Rosaceae “Aroses” and Fabaceae “Alegumes” that are native to these two mountain ranges. We are estimating PD using inferred branch lengths based on phylogenetic analyses of complete sequences of the plastid matK gene derived from herbarium and field collected samples of the taxa native to the Huachucas and White Mountains to supplement recently published matK data sets for each of these two families. Comparative analyses of the estimated divergences summed from these respective phylogenies will be used to calculate PD values for each family for comparison to other measures of diversity (e.g., simple species lists). Creation of such phylogenetic databases of local ecological communities, regional floras, or entire biomes is just beginning and will increase our understanding and promote the conservation of biological diversity and the underlying patterns of community ecology and evolution.