Chloroplast phylogeography of Dipentodon (Dipentodontaceae) in southwest China and northern Vietnam

The evolutionary history of plants in the southeast Tibetan Plateau might be the most complicated around the world because of the area's extremely complex topography and climate induced by strong tectonic activity in recent history. In this research, we implemented a phylogeographical study using chloroplast sequences (psbA-trnH and trnQ-rps16 intergenic spacer) on Dipentodon, a monotypic or ditypic genus (D. sinicus and D. longipedicellatus) distributed in southwest China and adjacent areas including Myanmar (Burma), northeast India and northern Vietnam. A total of 257 samples from 16 populations from the southeast Tibetan Plateau (D. longipedicellatus) and the Yungui Plateau (D. sinicus) were collected. The results revealed that Dipentodon had 11 haplotypes for the two intergenic spacers, high genetic diversity (h(T) = 0.902) and high genetic differentiation (N-ST = 0.987 and G(ST) = 0.948). AMOVA analysis showed that the component of among-population within region/species (55.25%) was unexpectedly larger than the among-species/region component (43.69%), which indicates that there is no justification for recognizing two species in Dipentodon. Correlation of pairwise genetic and geographical distances showed that Dipentodon populations in the southeast Tibetan Plateau may have suffered more habitat fragmentation than populations in the Yungui Plateau because of the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau than populations in the Yungui Plateau have. Nested clade analysis showed that 11 haplotypes formed two 3-level, three 2-level and seven 1-level clades, with eight clades showing significant geographical association. However, clade 2-1 and 2-2 did not cluster together, although they are distributed in the same region (Yungui Plateau) and belong to the same species (D. sinicus). This led not only to incongruence between haplotype network and geographical distribution of 2-level clades, but also to paraphyly of D. sinicus to D. longipedicellatus. We concluded that the incongruence and paraphyly may result from incomplete lineage sorting during the rapid and extreme tectonic events of the Tibetan Plateau. The results reported here will no doubt provide new insights into the evolution of biodiversity on the Tibetan Plateau and adjacent areas, and a historical framework for the conservation of biodiversity in this area, including Dipentodon.