Phylogenetic Structure and Marker Congruence in Central Asian Ferula (Apiaceae): Insights from Nuclear ITS2 and Plastid psbA–trnH Data

The genus Ferula (Apiaceae) is taxonomically challenging because of morphological plasticity, incomplete lineage sorting, and documented discordance between nuclear and plastid datasets. To test marker congruence at the regional scale, we analysed five Ferula species from Central Kazakhstan using the nuclear ITS2 and plastid psbA–trnH loci. Sequences were aligned with MUSCLE and analysed in MEGA X using Maximum Likelihood with 1000 bootstrap replicates and model selection based on the Akaike Information Criterion. Both loci yielded largely congruent topologies, and the two-locus consensus recovered species-level relationships without strongly supported cytonuclear conflict, unlike some previously reported Ferula lineages. These results support the utility of ITS2 and psbA–trnH for regional phylogenetic studies in Ferula and provide additional molecular evidence for species relationships in Central Asian representatives of Ferulinae.