Description of two new species and phylogenetic placement of recent taxonomic novelties in the Chilean endemic genus Miersia (Gilliesieae, Allioideae, Amaryllidaceae)

Abstract: Two new species in the Chilean endemic genus Miersia (Gilliesieae, Allioideae, Amaryllidaceae) are introduced: M. stellata and M. raucoana. A morphological description, distribution map, illustration, and the assessment of their conservation status are provided for each new taxon, along with an updated key to all species in Miersia. Additionally, analyses of DNA sequences were performed to inquire the evolutionary affinities of both new species and the recently described, M. putaendensis, within Gilliesieae phylogenetic framework. Data from multiple single-copy nuclear genes, as well as the inclusion of Trichlora and Schickendantziella, are necessary to corroborate the tribe’s phylogeny and reassess its generic classification.

Dataset description: Two phylip alignment files were uploaded: 1) Miersia_nov_ITS_3.0.phy, includes sequences of nrDNA ITS (nrITS) region, and 2) Miersia_nov_cpDNA_3.0.phy, includes concatenated sequences of two chloroplast (cpDNA) markers, trnL-F and rbcL. Sequences were aligned using MAFFT v.1.4.0.

Three *.bestTree.tre files for 1) nrITS, 2) cpDNA, and 3) concatenated dataset of all loci (nrITS, trnL-F, rbcL). All were inferred using RAxML-NG v.1.1.0 (Kozlov et al. 2019), GTR+Γ as the model of molecular evolution (--model GTR+G), and partitioned by locus. nrITS and cpDNA analyses were performed conducting 50 tree searches using 25 random and 25 parsimony-based starting trees to pick the best-scoring topology (--tree pars{25},rand{25}), and the concatenated analysis included 100 tree searches using 50 random and 50 parsimony-based starting trees (--tree pars{50},rand{50}). 

Also, the respective boostrap trees (*.bootstraps.tre) were uploaded for each analysis. Likelihood bootstrap analyses were conducted in RAxML-NG v.1.1.0 with 1,000 pseudoreplicates (--bs-trees 1000).

We also uploaded two Nexus files which correspond to sequence data from Escobar et al. (2020, Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 194: 84–99), considering that these are currently not available in TreeBase.