Correlated evolutionary rates across genomic compartments in Annonaceae

The molecular clock hypothesis is an important concept in biology. Deviations from a constant rate of nucleotide substitution have been found widely among lineages, genomes, genes and individual sites. Phylogenetic research can accommodate for these differences in applying specific models of evolution. Lineage-specific rate heterogeneity however can generate bi- or multimodal distributions of substitution rates across the branches of a tree and this may mislead phylogenetic inferences with currently available models. The plant family Annonaceae is an excellent case to study lineage-specific rate heterogeneity. The two major sister subfamilies, Annonoideae and Malmeoideae, have shown great discrepancies in branch lengths. We used high-throughput sequencing data of 72 genes, 99 spacers and 16 introns from 24 chloroplast genomes and nuclear ribosomal DNA of 23 species to study the molecular rate of evolution in Annonaceae. In all analyses, longer branch lengths and/or higher substitution rates were found for the Annonoideae compared to the Malmeoideae. The Annonaceae had wide variability in chloroplast length, ranging from minimal 175,684bp to 201,723 for Annonoideae and minimal 152,357 to 170,985bp in Malmeoideae, mostly reflecting variation in inverted-repeat length. The Annonoideae showed a higher GC-content in the conserved parts of the chloroplast genome and higher omega (dN/dS)-ratios than the Malmeoideae, which could indicate less stringent purifying selection, a pattern that has been found in groups with small population sizes. This study generates new insights into the processes causing lineage-specific rate heterogeneity, which could lead to improved phylogenetic methods.