complete genus level phylogeny of palms: scientific article

[awkonradi]

http://www.biomedcen.../1741-7007/9/44

[pindo]

Thanks Andrei

[realarch]

Thanks for the link, looks like an interesting read.

[awkonradi]

Here are some phylogenetic trees from one of the references in that paper. Maybe these would suggest hybridizing some closely related genera, for which hybrids have not been explored previously.

[Kailua_Krish]

Its interesting the degree of separation between Butia and Syagrus and that they still make hybrids.

-Krishna

[sarasota alex]

Andrei, thanks for posting this! I am a taxonomy junkie, so I try to read every paper that comes out. Because of the budget cuts Sarasota library cancelled the inter-library loan capabilities, and most of the recent articles cost money and my library is not subscribed to expensive publications such as the Annals of Botany. So I still haven't read the "Phylogenetic Relationships Among Arecoid Palms" even though it came out in February. That entire 02/11 special issue of Annals of Botany on palms is $32 per article, so I'm waiting for a way to get to it.

The article you linked to was luckily free when it came out.

The diagrams you posted are from the 2009 "Complete Generic-Level Phylogenetic Analyses of Palms" article by W. Baker, J. Dransfield, N. Uhl and others. It came out at about the same time as the Genera Palmarum 2nd Edition book and is largely based on the same phylogenetic structure.

Krisha, there was a more recent paper ("Phylogenetic Analysis of Seven WRKY Genes across the Palm Subtribe Attaleinae") by A. Meerow, L. Noblick and others which rearranged the genera within the Attaleinae sub-tribe with Cocoseae tribe. Although Butia and Syagrus are still pretty far apart, this not only strongly reinforces support for combining Syagrus and Lytocaryum, but goes as far as using them as one for relationship studies. Gunn in 2004 (The Phylogeny of Cocoseae) first brought up the fact that Syagrus fails to resolve as monophylectic if Lytocaryum species are excluded. Gunn found, for example, that Syagrus romanzoffiana is more closely related to Lytocaryum weddellianum, than to Syagrus amara. Meerow, Noblick, et al. also placed Cocos as a close relative to Syagrus-Lytocaryum and moved Parajubaea closer to Allagoptera and Polyandrococos (which they also support making a separate genus again).

Another interesting hybridization case is Veitchia and Wodyetia. A very recent paper (September 2011) "Molecular Phylogenetics of the Palm Subtribe Ptychospermatinae" by S. Zona, W. Baker, C. Lewis et al. place these genera relatively far apart into different clades within the subtribe.