LAUSR

A species complex group Litsea is a dioecious tree species characterized by having aromatic leaves, coriaceous inflorescence, introse anthers with hairy stamens. In the Western Ghats areas of Karnataka state, India; 12 species of Litsea are distributed. These species are almost identical in nature and are difficult to identify using only the morphological characters that to when they are not bloomed. Many researchers are trying to resolve the systematic complexity of the genus by different approaches. In the present study, morphological and molecular data were used to explain the systematic complexity and phylogeny of the group. In this study we have used both morphological characters as well as molecular phylogeny characterization by using certain primers. For morphological data set we have used 16 phenotypic characters among 12 Litsea species along with two outgroup species collected from Central Western Ghats. For molecular studies total genomic DNA was isolated by freshly collected leaf samples, amplified and sequenced by using different primer combination for comparing the phylogeny results. The sequence fragments of each taxon were first edited individually then analysed and aligned in the software Sequencher 5.2. The combination of ITS1, ETS1 and 18S-IGS primers data was found to be very useful to get phylogenetic tree. Addition of more species from different geographical regions may yield a clear phylogeny of the genus.