Molecular phylogeny of Southeast Asian Dipterocarps belonging to tribe Dipterocarpeae (family Dipterocarpaceae) based on non-coding sequence data of chloroplast and nuclear DNA

Tropical rainforests are hostspots of biodiversity. Therefore, their species’ richness and sustainability are of central importance. However, during the last decades, the destruction of tropical forest, mainly by illegal logging, has severely degraded the tropical rainforests. In terms of forest certification, timber identification of tree species and their origin are recently being applied for monitoring and control of illegal activities and thereby aiming at the conservation of tropical forests.

The development of molecular methods (e.g. genetic fingerprints) as tools for identification of timber should be considered in depth, since the manipulation of DNA is impossible. The results of this study contribute to this direction by introducing diagnostic markers for the identification of tree species Shorea leprosula and S. parvifolia and also for the origin of S. leprosula, these two species being the most dominant tree species of mixed dipterocarp forests in Indonesia.