XVI International Botanical Congess
The inoperculate discomycetes are a large and heterogeneous assemblage of taxa many of which are currently classified in the Helotiales and Rhytismatales. These orders have been phylogenetically enigmatic due to the diverse ecological and life history strategies and overlapping morphological characters. The phylogeny inferred from nuclear SSU rDNA includes 21 families of discomycetes, as well as other major euascomycete lineages. This gene phylogeny was used as a basis for further refinement of taxon and character sampling design in an effort to approach reconstruction of an organismal phylogeny. Three additional gene regions representing a total of three loci (nrSSU & LSU, mtSSU, and RPB2) have been used in cladistic analyses to test and refine phylogenetic hypotheses for inopeculate discomycetes.