A combined mitochondrial and nuclear multilocus phylogeny of the genus Phytophthora

•Phylogeny of 92 recognized and 17 provisional Phytophthora species.•Multilocus analysis using seven nuclear and four mitochondrial loci (10,828 bp).•Eight phylogenetic lineages identified that may represent new species.•A modified multispecies coalescent was used to provide better clade support.

The most recent phylogenetic analysis of the genus Phytophthora was completed in 2008 ( Blair et al., 2008) and utilized 8.1 kb of sequence data from seven nuclear loci. Given the large number of species that have recently been described, this study was undertaken to broaden the available information on the phylogeny of the genus. A total of 166 isolates representing 92 recognized species and 17 provisional species were analyzed, including many of the same isolates used in the nuclear multilocus study of Blair et al. (2008). Four mitochondrial genes (cox2, nad9, rps10 and secY) were sequenced with a total of 2373 bp used in the analysis; the species relationships recovered with mitochondrial data were largely consistent with those observed previously in the nuclear analysis. Combining the new mitochondrial data with the nuclear data from Blair et al. (2008) generated a dataset of 10,828 bp representing 11 loci, however resolution of basal clade relationships was still low. We therefore implemented a modified multispecies coalescent approach with a subset of the data, and recovered increased resolution and moderate to high support for clade relationships. A more detailed analysis of species from clades 2 and 8 identified an additional seven phylogenetic lineages that warrant further investigation to determine if they represent distinct species. As has been reported in other phylogenetic studies of the genus, there was no consistent correlation between phylogenetic relatedness and morphological features or ecology.