The morpho-genetic and ecological niche analyses reveal the existence of climatically restricted Cycas zeylanica complex in Sri Lanka

Taxonomy and phylogenesis of Sri Lankan cycad species of the subsection Rumphiae has not been fully resolved and therefore, we conducted an island-wide survey of cycads of the subsection to assess their morphological or genetic variations while exploring the phylogenetic relationship between Sri Lankan Rumphiae and other world cycad species. Further, we assessed the possible distribution of the species in the region through climatic profiling, using maximum entropy modeling approach. We analyzed 21 variable morphological features in collected specimens and used the polymorphism of trnH-psbA locus to understand the phylogeny. The distance tree drawn from the principal component analysis revealed a significant variation in female reproductive structures. The maximum likelihood tree separated Sri Lankan Cycas zeylanica to a well-supported unigeneric clade (bootstrap = 96, posterior probability = 100) with shallow divergence. Ecological niche modeling supported the existence of Cycas zeylanica in South East Asia and in southern Western Ghats in India in addition to the Wet Zone of Sri Lanka. We rename the taxa as Cycas zeylanica complex based on the observed high morphological diversity of female reproductive structures which might have ascended due to multiple introductions of South East Asian cycads by long distance dispersal of seeds through sea currents.