Chloroplast Genome Provides Insights into Molecular Evolution and Species Relationship of Fleabanes (: Tribe Astereae, Asteraceae) in the Juan Fernández Islands, Chile.

represents the third largest genus on the Juan Fernández Islands, with six endemic species, five of which occur exclusively on the younger Alejandro Selkirk Island with one species on both islands. While its continental sister species is unknown, on the Juan Fernández Islands appears to be monophyletic and most likely evolved from South American progenitor species. We characterized the complete chloroplast genomes of five species, including accessions of and one each from Alejandro Selkirk and Robinson Crusoe Islands, with the purposes of elucidating molecular evolution and phylogenetic relationships. We found highly conserved chloroplast genomes in size, gene order and contents, and further identified several mutation hotspot regions. In addition, we found two positively selected chloroplast genes ( and ) among species in the islands. The complete plastome sequences confirmed the monophyly of in the islands and corroborated previous phylogenetic relationships among species. New findings in the current study include (1) two major lineages, - and --, (2) the non-monophyly of occurring on the two islands, and (3) the non-monophyly of the alpine species complex.