Parmelioid lichens form a species-rich group of predominantly foliose and fruticose lichenized fungi encompassing a broad range of morphological and chemical diversity. Using a multilocus approach, we reconstructed a phylogeny including 323 OTUs of parmelioid lichens and employed ancestral character reconstruction methods to understand the phenotypical evolution within this speciose group of li...

Choosing an ancestral state reconstruction method among the alternatives available for quantitative characters may be puzzling. We present here a comparison of seven of them, namely the maximum likelihood, restricted maximum likelihood, generalized least squares under Brownian, Brownian-with-trend and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck models, phylogenetic independent contrasts and squared parsimony methods. A...

Ancestral reconstruction is the extrapolation back in time from measured characteristics of individuals (or populations) to their common ancestors. It is an important application of phylogenetics, the reconstruction and study of the evolutionary relationships among individuals, populations, or species to their ancestors. In the context of biology, ancestral reconstruction can be used to recover...

Xylariomycetidae (Ascomycota) is a highly diversified group with variable stromatic characters. Our research focused on inconspicuous xylarialean taxa from China, Italy, Russia, Thailand and the United Kingdom. Detailed morphological descriptions, illustrations combined ITS-LSU-rpb2-tub2-tef1 phylogenies revealed 39 our collections belonging to Amphisphaeriales Xylariales. A new family (Appendi...

The subtribe Eritrichiinae belongs to tribe Rochelieae (Borginaceae; Cynoglossoideae) which is composed of about 200 species in five genera including Eritrichium, Lappula, Hackelia, Lepechiniella, and Rochelia. The majority of the species are annual and grow in xeric habitats. The genus Lappula as an arid adapted and the second biggest genus...