XVI International Botanical Congess

Of the more than fifty species of Lithocarpus found on the island of Borneo, more than ninety percent of these have been documented to occur on Mount Kinabalu and in the surrounding lowlands. These species form diverse mixed communities which tend to dominate the middle and upper elevations of the mountain. While the closely related genus Quercus is known to hybridize widely in temperate mixed species forests, it is not known whether Lithocarpus species also hybridize. Population samples of species from two subgenera will be examined for the possible introgression of molecular and morphological markers across species boundaries from Mt. Kinabalu and other sites on the island. This study will be done within the context of a phylogenetic reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the genus, to verify the proposed infrageneric relationships. Biogeographical and ecological information will also be assessed to determine the likelihood of Mt. Kinabalu having served as a refugia and /or a center of speciation during the history of the genus.