Molecular Identification of Pottiaceae Mosses from Southern Kazakhstan

Pottiaceae mosses remain insufficiently represented in molecular datasets from Central Asia, limiting comparisons with specimens from other regions. This study evaluated molecular support for the identification of 16 voucher-linked specimens collected in the Western Tien Shan, Kazygurt Mountains and Kazygurt village of southern Kazakhstan and generated nuclear ITS1 and ITS2 and chloroplast trnT–trnL sequence records. ITS2 comparisons with selected GenBank references recovered strongly supported groups for specimens assigned to Syntrichia intermedia, S. virescens, S. princeps, Geheebia siccula, Tortula subulata and Vinealobryum vineale, with ultrafast bootstrap support of 96–100%. Placements of S. ruraliformis, T. mucronifolia and Barbula unguiculata received 92–93% support, whereas the placement of S. ruralis was less strongly supported and relationships involving S. caninervis remained unresolved. These findings provide molecular evidence consistent with several working identifications while demonstrating the limited resolution of a short ITS2 region for some taxa. The ITS1 and trnT–trnL records complement the ITS2 dataset as publicly available sequence resources. Together, the voucher-linked records expand the molecular representation of Pottiaceae from Kazakhstan and provide a foundation for future taxonomic and multilocus studies.