XVI International Botanical Congess

The Bryopsida comprise those mosses which bear peristomes teeth that are composed of thickened cell-wall remnants rather than whole cells. The architecture of the teeth has been central to traditional ordinal classifications of mosses. Based on the assumption that Diphyscium, is ancestral to the Bryopsida, phylogenetic hypotheses are inferred from analyses of nuclear and chloroplastid sequences. Preliminary analyses suggest that 1) the Funariales are polyphyletic, 2) The Timmiaceae are basal in this lineage, 3)The remaining Diplolepideae form a robust monophyletic clade. The affinities of the Encalyptales and Haplolepideae are currently unresolved, they compose either a monophyletic or paraphyletic clade with the Funariales. Our current results support the hypothesis that the opposite arrangement of outer and inner teeth is primitive while a symmetric architecture of the inner segments may be derived within a basal lineage of mosses.