The bladed Bangiales (Rhodophyta) of the South Eastern Pacific: Molecular species delimitation reveals extensive diversity q Marie-Laure Guillemin a,b , Loretto Contreras-Porcia c,d , María Eliana Ramírez c,e , Erasmo C. Macaya f,g , Cristian Bulboa Contador c , Helen Woods h,i , Christopher Wyatt j,k , Juliet Brodie h,⇑ a Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile b UMI 3614 Evolutionary Biology and Ecology of Algae, CNRS, Sorbonne Universite ´s UPMC Univ. Paris 06, Pontificia Universidad Cato ´lica de Chile, Universidad Austral de Chile c Departamento de Ecología y Biodiversidad, Facultad de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Universidad Andres Bello, República 440, Santiago, Chile d Center of Applied Ecology & Sustainability (CAPES), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile e Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Área Botánica, Casilla 787, Santiago, Chile f Departamento de Oceanografía, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Oceanográficas, Universidad de Concepción, Casilla 160-C, Concepción, Chile g Millennium Nucleus Ecology and Sustainable Management of Oceanic Island (ESMOI), Coquimbo, Chile h Natural History Museum, Department of Life Sciences, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK i Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Edinburgh, Bush Estate, Penicuik, Midlothian, Scotland EH26 0QB, UK j EMBL/CRG Research Unit in Systems Biology, Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Barcelona 08003, Spain k Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona 08003, Spain article info Article history: Received 4 June 2015 Revised 22 September 2015 Accepted 30 September 2015 Available online 17 October 2015 Keywords: Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD) Chile Mitochondrial COI General Mixed Yule Coalescence (GMYC) Morphological plasticity Plastid rbcL abstract A molecular taxonomic study of the bladed Bangiales of the South Eastern Pacific (coast of Chile) was undertaken based on sequence data of the mitochondrial COI and chloroplast rbcL for 193 specimens collected from Arica (18°S) in the north to South Patagonia (53°S) in the south. The results revealed for the first time that four genera, Porphyra, Pyropia, Fuscifolium and Wildemania were present in the region. Species delimitation was determined based on a combination of a General Mixed Yule Coalescence model (GMYC) and Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD) coupled with detection of monophyly in tree reconstruction. The overall incongruence between the species delimitation methods within each gene was 29%. The GMYC method led to over-splitting groups, whereas the ABGD method had a tendency to lump groups. Taking a conservative approach to the number of putative species, at least 18 were rec- ognized and, with the exception of the recently described Pyropia orbicularis, all were new to the Chilean flora. Porphyra and Pyropia were the most diverse genera with eight ‘species’ each, whereas only a ‘single’ species each was found for Fuscifolium and Wildemania. There was also evidence of recently diverging groups: Wildemania sp. was distinct but very closely related to W. amplissima from the Northern Hemisphere and raises questions in relation to such disjunct distributions. Pyropia orbicularis was very closely related to two other species, making species delimitation very difficult but provides evidence of an incipient speciation. The difference between the ‘species’ discovered and those previously reported for the region is discussed in relation to the difficulty of distinguishing species based on morphological identification. Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The bladed Bangiales are a diverse, cosmopolitan order of mor- phologically simple red algae, and an economically important resource used in the production of ‘‘nori”. Identification and taxo- nomic placement within the order have been highly problematic due to the simple and variable morphology of specimens, and all bladed species were assigned to the genus Porphyra until Sutherland et al. (2011), on the basis of a two-gene phylogeny, split the genus into eight genera: Boreophyllum, Clymene, Fuscifolium, Lysithea, Miuraea, Porphyra, Pyropia and Wildemania. A ninth bladed genus, Neothemis, has been added recently, based on a study of the bladed Bangiales in the western Mediterranean (Sánchez et al., 2014, 2015). As a consequence of the generic revi- sion, we are now in a position to evaluate/re-evaluate local and regional Bangiales floras. Although the difficulty of distinguishing http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2015.09.027 1055-7903/Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. q This paper was edited by the Associate Editor Adrian Reyes-Prieto. ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: j.brodie@nhm.ac.uk (J. Brodie). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 94 (2016) 814–826 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ympev