XVI International Botanical Congess

Most previous studies of allopolyploids are based on additivity and/or intermediacy of the putative parental species. With this approach, no alternative hypothesis are tested and it is ambigous what kind ofobservation would falsify the hypothesis. By identifying and characterizing homeologous DNA regions from the hypothetical parental lineages, it is possible to use cladistic methods to infer histories of allopolyploid plants. This approach has been used to test hypothesis concerning the parental lineages of the allotetraploid Silene aegaea, by inferring phylogenies of nuclear DNA sequences (rDNA and low copy number regions).