Poster ID: 338

Background: • The Africa vegetation can be broadly classified into: Austro-temperate,

tropic-montane, tropic alpine, lowland forests, savanna, arid flora (Linder 2014)

• Kenya is a microcosm of the African flora, holding lowland forests, montane forests, Afroalpine heaths, savanna (mesic and arid)

• 1800 of the 7000 vascular plant species in Kenya are woody, and East Africa has 12,100 described vascular plant species of the flora of Tropical East (Mwachala, 2011; Beentje, 1994)

• Current identification tools are limited to taxonomic (dichotomous) keys, which have limited value for identification of traded taxa which are often found fragmented plant material such as herbal preparations, wood logs, etc.

• This study aims to contribute to the Barcode of Life repository facility barcode gene sequences for 50% of the Kenyan woody plants, and use the generated sequences together with species data towards studying patterns of evolutionary history and diversity in plant communities of the flora of Kenya

• As a 1st step, we characterize the units in the flora of Kenya as a way to guide sampling for DNA barcoding

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DNA barcodes library for the Kenya woody plants

Mbaluka, J. K.1,2*, Mwachala, G.2, M. van der Bank3 &. A. M. Muasya1

1Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa.

2East Africa Herbarium, National Museum of Kenya, P.O box 40658, Nairobi, Kenya. 3Department of Botany & Plant Biotechnology, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park 2006, Johannesburg, South Africa.

*Corresponding author Email: jkmbaluka@yahoo.com

References: Beentje HJ. 1994. Kenya Trees, shrubs and Lianas. National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi. Edwards, J.E., Still, C.J., and Donoghue, M.J. 2007. The relevance of phylogeny to studies of global change. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 22, 243–9. Lind, E.M. and Morrison, M.E.S. with contributions by Hamilton, A. 1974. East African vegetation. Longman, London. Linder, H.P. 2014. The evolution of African plant diversity. Front. Ecol. Evol. Mwachala, G. 2011. List of East Africa Plants. Unpublished database. National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya. Funding Sources: • Francis H Brown African Research Scholarship Fund (https://leakeyfoundation.org/frank brown/) • University of Cape Town

Figure 2. (a) Major vegetation types (after Lind & Morrison work of 1974) and (b) spatial clusters derived from a species-level floristic data matrix

Key 1 Coastal forests 2 & 3 Savannah (Mesic & arid) 4 Afromontane forests

5 equatorial (lowland) forests

Figure 1. A sample of Kenyan flora

Objective: • To identify major vegetation assemblages, based on species

occurrence records, of the Kenyan flora Methodology: • We used present/absence species-level floristic inventory data of

34 sites based on published checklists and grey literature • Complemented the data with herbarium collections at the East

African herbarium • The 34 sites represented the savannah and forest ecological

divisions in Kenya as discriminated by Lind & Morrison (1974). • Analyzed the data by a multivariate analysis of Detrended

Correspondence Analysis (DCA)

Results: • The 34 sites clustered into five

distinct clusters (Figure 2). • The forest sites formed three

distinctive clusters, representing coastal forests (cluster 1), Afromontane forests (cluster 4) and the equatorial (lowland) forest (cluster 5)

• Mesic (cluster 3) and arid (cluster 2) savannah sites formed two units (2 and 3) (see Figure 2)

Evolutionary highlights: • We hypothesize that the five distinct

clusters represent assemblages with unique evolutionary histories

• Coastal forests host diverse old lineages which are phylogenetically distinct from the more recently (Miocene) assembled montane forests

• Assembly of the East African flora carries signature of active geomorphological processes in the region

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Future research: • Ongoing DNA barcording aims to include representatives from the five clusters • Estimation of ages of the assemblages, especially the arid savanna, could contribute to broader questions on the African biota • The choice of our sampling strategy was guided by the premise that, many functionally significant traits are phylogenetically structured

(Edwards et al. 2007)