Biosystematical investigation of Loranthaceae and Viscaceae based on nrDNA ITS and cpDNA trnL-F

Loranthaceae comprises three hemiparasitic genera with five species in Iran. The genera of this family occur mainly in tropical and subtropical areas worldwide. These genera family are distributed in two geographical regions of Alborz and the central parts of Iran. The taxa existing in Iran which are included in this analysis are: the genus Loranthus Jacq., which includes two species: L. europaeus, which lives on Quercus, and L. grewinkii is found on Pyrus and Amygdalus; the genus Viscum L. with two species: V. album and V. laxum attacking different trees; and Arceuthobium oxycedri which is found on Juniperus spp. Jin jungles of Semnan. The total DNA was extracted from fresh or herbarium specimens with a modified CTAB method. The regions of nrDNA ITS and cptrnL-F were amplified and sequenced. In this study, 27 taxa (24 taxa for cptrnL-F, 23 taxa for nrDNA ITS, 20 taxa for combined sequence data) were studied as ingroups and 3 taxa as outgroups. To reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships in Loranthaceae and to compare the affinities of this family with the other members of Santalales, the molecular data were analyzed. The analyses were carried out using Maximum Parsimony, Bayesian method and Maximum Likelihood method. Our results indicated that Loranthaceae is monophyletic. The strict consensus tree from Maximum Parsimony analysis of the concatenated two gene dataset showed two monophyletic clades with 100% bootstrap support for two families Loranthaceae and Viscaceae.