Genomics and bioinformatics are emerging disciplines that have the potential to fundamentally alter current approaches to molecular systematics. The sequencing of eukaryotic genomes has demonstrated the ability to obtain and interpret nucleotide sequences at a scale and efficiency that was unimaginable just a few years ago. The immense amount of sequence information generated by genome projects...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Just as Sanger sequencing did more than 20 years ago, next-generation sequencing (NGS) is poised to revolutionize plant systematics. By combining multiplexing approaches with NGS throughput, systematists may no longer need to choose between more taxa or more characters. Here we describe a genome skimming (shallow sequencing) approach for plant systematics. METHODS Through...

1 Plant Ecology, Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria, 2 Department of Plant Systematics, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany, 3 Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Conservation and Sustainable Utilization, South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China, 4 Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK, ...