Phylogenetic and ancestral area reconstruction of Zingiberales from plastid genomes

•The broad gene strategy has led to greatly improved support among major Zingiberales lineages.•Musaceae is placed at the basal within Zingiberales with strong support values.•The arisen of crown Zingiberales is in both Australia and Africa, with most likely in Australia.•The ginger families presented multiple independent major radiations in Neotropical America.

The Zingiberales is an ancient monocot order in the angiosperms. It has undergone radiation since the Cretaceous period. However, the relationships among primary lineages (families) are difficult to resolve. Additional support for phylogenetic relationships within this order have been obtained using plastid genome data from 76 coding genes and 4 rDNA loci from 17 species represented eight families. We reconstructed ancestral geographic areas using the Bayesian Binary Markov Chain Monte Carlo (BMM) method. These analyses indicated several major radiations of Zingiberales occurring in Africa, Neotropical America and Australia.