ibclogo XVI International Botanical Congess

Abstract Number: 4491
Session = 4.5.1


EVOLUTION OF THE MAJOR MOSS LINEAGES


Terry Hedderson1 Cymon Cox2, Jeff Duckett3, Bernard Goffinett4,Brent Mishler5, Dale Vitt6, 1University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2Natural History Museum, London, UK, 3Queen Mary College, London, UK, 4Duke University, Durham, USA, 5University of California, Berkeley, USA, 6University of Alberta, Canada


Among the land plants, mosses are surpassed in species diversity only by the angiosperms, and they play significant (albeit largely unappreciated) roles in many ecosystems. Systematic studies of mosses should provide substantial information relevant to understanding the origins and maintenance of global diversity. Nonetheless, relationships of mosses are poorly understood, with familial, ordinal and subclass relationships remaining especially obscure. We analyse a data set for >80 moss species comprising nucleotide sequences from four DNA regions, along with morphological and ultrastructural characters. These analyses yield considerable resolution of higher level relationships in the mosses and provide insight into a number of moss features. These include the relationships of arthrodontous and nematodontous mosses, diversification of the arthrodontous persistome and the origins of haplolepidy, modification of protonemal structure and evolutionary changes in placentation.

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