Is Remusatia (Araceae) Monophyletic? Evidence from Three Plastid Regions

The genus Remusatia (Araceae) includes four species distributed in the tropical and subtropical Old World. The phylogeny of Remusatia was constructed using parsimony and Bayesian analyses of sequence data from three plastid regions (the rbcL gene, the trnL-trnF intergenic spacer, and the rps16 intron). Phylogenetic analyses of the concatenated plastid data suggested that the monophyly of Remusatia was not supported because R. hookeriana did not form a clade with the other three species R. vivipara, R. yunnanensis, and R. pumila. Nevertheless, the topology of the analysis constraining Remusatia to monophyly was congruent with the topology of the unconstrained analysis. The results confirmed the inclusion of the previously separate genus Gonatanthus within Remusatia and disagreed with the current infrageneric classification of the genus.