Multiple evidence supporting a novel species amid complex phylogenomic discordance: a case of Indian Ledebouria based on Angiosperms353 target capture sequencing

Ledebouria, a geophytic herb native genus to Africa and represented by a few species in the Arabian Peninsula, Madagascar, India and Sri Lanka. For a long time Indian species were named as L. revoluta until recent molecular work clarified African L. revoluta is distinct from Indian and Sri Lankan species. Hence the name L. hyacinthina was resurrected. However, there is no clear molecular or morphological clarification of the different morphotypes and karyotypes observed in various accessions from peninsular India. Since plastid DNA sequence markers failed to detect diversity, we used the high density, low copy number marker set, the Angiosperms353, for phylogenomic analysis of eight accessions and analysed with the same markers from the global dataset from published work. Our analysis shows L. hyderabadensis is a distinct species, whereas other widely distributed Indian accessions under the other name L. hyacinthina are young lineages representing incipient species. Our results indicate that Ledebouria has not diversified enough at the molecular sequence level for the marker set used. The same is also true of the chloroplast sequences.