DOI: 10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4gc
title: Data from: Out of Africa to Madagascar - then back? Molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of tribe Tarchonantheae (Asteraceae: Tarchonanthoideae)

description: Premise of research. Molecular data have revolutionized inferences of
 phylogenetic relationships and historical biogeography of flowering
 plants. Two small genera, Brachylaena and Tarchonanthus, are the only
 members of Asteraceae tribe Tarchonantheae (subfamily Tarchonanthoideae).
 The tribe is morphologically distinct within Asteraceae and is resolved as
 monophyletic with molecular markers. It is distributed in southern Africa
 and Madagascar. The purposes of the present study were to determine
 whether molecular data resolve the two genera as monophyletic and to infer
 the origin and dispersals that produced the current distribution of the
 tribe. Methodology. Sequences from the nuclear ribosomal ITS and ETS and
 plastid rpl16 intron were analyzed using maximum likelihood and Bayesian
 analyses to resolve phylogenetic relationships within the tribe. An
 ancestral trait reconstruction assessed the likely ancestral range for
 Tarchonantheae using BioGeoBEARS, and BEAST was used for dating
 divergence. Pivotal results. We resolved Tarchonanthus as a monophyletic
 group nested within Brachylaena, making the latter genus paraphyletic. All
 Malagasy species occurred within a strongly supported clade, but also
 resolved within the clade was the widely distributed African species
 Brachylaena huillensis. This indicates two dispersal events between Africa
 and Madagascar—either a single dispersal to Madagascar, followed by back
 dispersal to Africa, or two independent dispersals from Africa. 
 Conclusions. Tarchonanthus is a monophyletic group nested within
 Brachylaena, rendering the latter genus paraphyletic. An initial dispersal
 of Brachylaena from Africa to Madagascar with subsequent speciation,
 followed by back dispersal to Africa, with minimal morphological
 divergence between the African species and its sister species in
 Madagascar could explain the current distribution of Brachylaena.
 Alternatively, there may have been two dispersal events to Madagascar from
 Africa during the Miocene, but all within the same subclade. Dispersal of
 flowering plants back to Africa from Madagascar is very rare, if not
 unprecedented. These dispersal events, and most diversification within the
 tribe, including the divergence of Tarchonanthus and Brachylaena, took
 place during the Miocene.
description: Sequence data were generated using Sanger sequencing of cleaned
 PCR products for three loci. Multiple sequence alignment was performed for
 each locus independently and loci were analyzed individually and as part
 of a concatenation using Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood.
 Fossil-calibrated divergence dating analyses were carried out using BEAST
 and biogeographic reconstruction was performed using
 BioGeoBEARS. 
description: Alignment files can be opened using any text editor; tree files
 can be opened using any phylogenetic tree imaging software (e.g.,
 FigTree), and BEAUTi .xml config files can be opened using a text editor
 or the BEAUTi v.1.10.4 software. 
description: # Analysis Files associated with
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4gc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4gc) --- his Dryad submission includes files associated with [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4gc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4gc) including .fasta alignment files, .xml configuration files for BEAST analyses, raw .tre output files from phylogenetic analyses and BEAST analyses, as well as figures published as part of this article. For any questions, please contact the corresponding author for this dataset or the published manuscript. ## Description of the data and file structure Multiple sequence alignments are saved as .fasta format; these alignments were used in the phylogenetic analyses described in the manuscript text. .xml files are config files used for divergence dating analyses described in the text. .eps files are image/figure files in this article and .tre files are raw .tre output files that resulted from comparative phylogenetic analyses. .eps files are images that correspond to supplemental figures published in this article and can be opened using Adobe Photoshop. These files can also be accessed through the original published manuscript.  All sequence data analyzed in this study are available through GenBank under the following GenBank Accession numbers: OQ209888–OQ209936 and OQ291400– OQ291435 ## Sharing/Access information Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data: * Sequence data has been submitted to NCBI's Genbank and accession numbers are provided in the manuscript: [https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PROGRAM=blastn&BLAST_SPEC=GeoBlast&PAGE_TYPE=BlastSearch](https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PROGRAM=blastn&BLAST_SPEC=GeoBlast&PAGE_TYPE=BlastSearch) Data was derived from the following sources: none ## Code/Software n/a