Phylogenetic Relationship Among the Indian Pandanus Species

Abstract

Taxonomy is a systematic classification of living organisms, whereas phylogeny is a theoretical model of the sequence of evolutionary divergence of organisms from their common ancestors. Phylogeny is derived from a combination of Greek words: phylon means stem and genesis means origin. It is the study of evolutionary relationships among organisms. Traditionally, morphology, anatomy, physiology, and paleontology are used to determine the phylogeny (Riley 2009). In Pandanaceae, the morphological characters used to describe species are mainly based on fruit. Further, characterization of the species requires a large set of phenotypic data that are difficult to access statistically and are variable due to environmental effects (Sedra et al. 1993, 1996, 1998). There are a number of DNA-based marker systems available for studying phylogeny. Unlike morphological markers, molecular markers are not prone to environmental influences and do portray the genetic relationship between plant groups (Powell 1992; Gottlieb 1977; Tanksley et al. 1989; McCouch and Tanksley 1991).