Hibbertia (Guinea flowers)

Aim: Phylogenomics Stage 2
Project initiation: Aug 2021
Project lead:  Michelle Waycott | University of Adelaide and State Herbarium of South Australia

Project description:

Related project: Hibbertia scandens reference genome project

Hibbertia is one of the largest vascular plant genera in Australia. The genus occurs throughout Australia, mostly in the wet temperate and tropical regions, and has a small radiation of ~23 spp. in New Caledonia and one species endemic to Madagascar. Hibbertia is the largest genus of Dilleniaceae, which is a family that sits at the base of the Super-rosids. It has long been identified as having pleisiomorphic floral traits for a eudicot. Floral morphology within the genus is very diverse, particularly in the androecium. Despite its size, diversity, and importance as a component of the Australian flora, there is no resolved phylogeny for the genus. Current knowledge of evolutionary relationships is limited to one sparsely sampled phylogeny by Horn (2005, 2009), who used three chloroplast loci. From this phylogeny, Horn erected four subgenera within Hibbertia.

We propose to sequence 96 Hibbertia species, which will fully resolve the backbone of the genus. Sampling will include one sample per species and 1-3 representative species from the 52 morphological species groups (number of representatives proportional to size of group) within Australia, 3 representative species from New Caledonia and 1 from Madagascar.