Making Sense of Species Present in West Virginia Rubus Collections

Domestication of Rubus has led to a reduction of morphological and genetic diversity.  Fortunately, wild species often offer an untapped diversity for breeders to access.  Complications arise in their use when the taxonomy of the genus is plagued by hybridization, polyploidy, various growth habits and lack of a universal species concept.  For example, most Rubus classification systems in West Virginia are artificial.  In addition, cultivated varieties might escape into the wild adding complications.  Thus to take advantage of the diversity requires a solid understanding of the evolutionary relationships within the genus as well as separation of cultivars, hybrids and wild species.  DNA barcoding alone is not sufficient to resolve phylogenies of species within genus in a geographical area.  Instead, using a combined study of systematics and coalescent theory a genealogical tree showing ancestry of the genus being analyzed can be created as well as provide the basis for a natural classification system.  This work has used herbarium and collected Rubus specimen from West Virginia in a comparative phylogenetic study to develop a natural classification system.  Both chloroplast (rbcL and matK) and nuclear (ITS) regions were sequenced and analyzed using Geneious and SNAP Workbench.  Morphological data was obtained using Tomato Analyzer software.  Initial analysis, separated the specimen into two distinct clades by using a neighbor joining.  Using maximum likelihood and coalescence analyses the species separate into three clades, beginning to clarify the species within Rubus suggesting analysis of genera with analogous problems may find this approach useful.