Phylogeny Of Ficus Section (Moraceae) And The Adaptation To Phylogenetic Test Of Fruit Trait Evolution

Ficus (Moraceae) is arguable the world's most diversed woody plant genus. The classification of this genus is questionable and being argued for a long time. The'four-genera classification'proposed by Corner (1965) is the dominating hypotheses. In 2003, Berg revised the four-genera classification based partly on molecular data and proposed a'six-genera classification'which needs to be approved by more stugy. In this study, I aimed to construct a new phylogenic tree by using the ITS and the trnL-F spacer getting from 38 species of all 6 subgenera of Ficus. Our results supported that Ficus is grouped into six subgenus proposed by Berg (2003). The subdivision of sect. Ficus is confirmed by this study. And sect. Ficus which is treated as monophly during the long history may be polyphyly. F. tikoua showing close related with subg. Sycomorous is justified to separate from subg. Ficus by our results which indicate that the way for fruit display is one of the important characters for the classification of Ficus.The seed dispersal syndrome is discussed on the basic of the phylogeny of Ficus in our study using the phylogenetic comparative methods. Both Felsenstein's independent contrasts method and Phylogenetic Mixed Model educe the same result. There is a significant correlation between fruit size and leaf size and both of them are highly influenced by the phylogentic fators (h12=0.61, h22=0.68). But leaf width is much more influenced by the phylogenetic factors than the fruit diameter, which indicates some nonphylogenetic factors affect fruit size.