Phylogenetic Study of Sumatran Impatiens (Balsaminaceae) Using Nuclear and Plastid DNA sequences

Although there have been several studies on the phylogeny of Impatiens, no such studies have been focused on Impatiens in Sumatra. This study aimed to reveal the phylogeny of Sumatran Impatiens and evaluate their position among species from regions. The atpB-rbcl intergenic spacer from plastid DNA and the Internal Transcribed Spaces region from nuclear ribosomal DNA (1414 bp in total) was sequenced for 24 samples representing 18 species of Impatiens, including 16 species endemic to Sumatra. Parsimony analyses were done with the addition of outgroups and sequences of Impatiens from NCNI GenBank. According to the strict consensus of 2120 most parsimonious trees from the combined data set, Impatiens is monophyletic with 93 persen bootstrap support. The ITS and atpB-rbcl data showed that Sumatran Impatiens is distributed in more than one clade depicting multiple origins from southern China. The addition of Sumatran-endemic species indicates that Impatiens probably originated in southern China. Acta Phytotax.Geobot 66(2):81-90 (2015)