Abstract
BACKGROUND: Elucidating the phylogenetic relationships within species-rich genera is essential but challenging, especially when lineages are assumed to have been going through radiation events. Mahonia Nutt. (Berberidaceae) is a genus with cosmopolitan distribution, comprising approximately 100 species, two of which are known as Caulis Mahoniae (M. bealei and M. fortunei) with crucial pharmacological significance in Chinese herbal medicine. Mahonia is a taxonomically challenging genus, and intrageneric phylogenetic relationships still need to be explored using genome data. Universal DNA barcodes and floral morphological attributes have limited discriminatory power in Mahonia. RESULTS: We sequenced 17 representative plastomes and integrated three published plastome data together to conduct comparative and phylogenetic analyses. We found that Mahonia and Berberis share a large IR expansion (~ 12 kb), which is recognized as a typical character of Berberideae. Repeated sequences are revealed in the species of Mahonia, which are valuable for further population genetic studies. Using a comparative plastome analysis, we determined eight hypervariable regions whose discriminative power is comparable to that of the whole plastid genomes. The incongruence of the ITS and the plastome tree topologies may be ascribed to ancestral hybridization events and/or to incomplete lineage sorting. In addition, we suggest that leaf epidermal characters could help to distinguish closely related species in Mahonia. CONCLUSIONS: We propose an integrative approach combining special barcodes and micromorphological traits to circumscribe Mahonia species. The results cast a new light on the development of an integrative method for accurate species circumscription and provide abundant genetic resources for further research on Mahonia.