A commentary on Plant auxin biosynthesis did not originate in charophytes The TRYPTOPHAN AMINOTRANSFERASE OF ARABIDOPSIS (TAA) family of aminotransferases and the YUCCA (YUC) family of flavin monooxygenases are required for the biosynthesis of auxin (Mashiguchi et al., 2011). However, the origin of TAA-YUC auxin biosynthesis pathway is under hot debate recently (Wang et al., 2014; Yue et al., 2...

Phylogenetic diversity–area curves are analogous to species–area curves and quantify the relationship between the phylogenetic diversity of species assemblages and the area over which assemblages are sampled. Here, we developed theoretical expectations of these curves under different ecological and macroevolutionary processes. We first used simulations to generate curves expected under three ec...

The development of new schemes for weighting DNA sequence data for phylogenetic analysis continues to outpace the development of consensus on the most appropriate weights. The present study is an exploration of the similarities and differences between results from 22 character weighting schemes when applied to a study of barbet and toucan (traditional avian families Capitonidae and Ramphastidae...

BACKGROUND Taxonomy and phylogeny of subclass Heterodonta including Tellinoidea are long-debated issues and a complete agreement has not been reached yet. Mitochondrial (mt) genomes have been proved to be a powerful tool in resolving phylogenetic relationship. However, to date, only ten complete mitochondrial genomes of Heterodonta, which is by far the most diverse major group of Bivalvia, have...

Phylogenetic and population genetic analyses of DNA sequence data from 10 nuclear loci were used to test species divergence hypotheses within Passerina buntings, with special focus on a strongly supported, but controversial, sister relationship between Passerina amoena and P. caerulea inferred from a previous mitochondrial study. Here, a maximum-likelihood analysis of a concatenated 10-locus da...

This study examines amphipod phylogeny based on small subunit (18S) rDNA sequence data. Complete sequences of 25 species representing six families were used to test the phylogenetic information content of this gene for reconstruction of amphipod phylogeny. The alignment proved to be informative for most of the studied taxa. The monophyly of the families Gammaridae, Crangonyctidae, Niphargidae a...

Phylogenetic relationship is an indication of shared abilities, or at least of shared constraints, on morphology, physiology, and behavior; but is phylogenetic relationship a sufficient criterion for predicting ecological function? Ecologists have assumed that the function of invertebrates in soil systems can be predicted at a low level of taxonomic resolution, but our research indicates that c...

Aspergillus subgenus Nidulantes accommodates species of industrial and medical importance. Thirty isolates morphologically assigned to subgenus Nidulantes were studied, 25 isolated from cereals in the north and northwestern provinces and the rest from other substrates in Iran. Based on morphological and molecular data (sequences of the ITS rDNA and β-tubulin), nine species were identified belon...