XVI International Botanical Congess
The genus Elatostema Forst. on Mount Kinabalu includes about 25 species. Several species, especially those an elevations above 1600 m, are endemic. This study addresses whether endemism is the result of local isolation and speciation processes, and/or if Kinabalu endemics have sibling taxa on other mountains in the Malesian floristic region. A phylogeny of all Kinabalu Elatostema (including selected species from elsewhere in the Malesian floristic region) will be presented. The locations of specimens from Kinabalu have been mapped on a micro-geographic scale with the aid of Landsat TM image, and are included as a coverage in a Geographical Information System (GIS). Slope, aspect, elevation, from a digital terrain model and pixel values from the Landsat TM image have been extracted for each locality. At this scale, endemism becomes specific to certain localities and habitats (such as high elevation ultramafic scrub) and area cladograms are applied at this scale.