Although great progress has been made in clarifying deep-level angiosperm relationships, several early nodes in the angiosperm branch of the Tree of Life have proved difficult to resolve. Perhaps the last great question remaining in basal angiosperm phylogeny involves the branching order among the five major clades of mesangiosperms (Ceratophyllum, Chloranthaceae, eudicots, magnoliids, and mono...

Movement of water from soil to atmosphere by plant transpiration can feed precipitation, but is limited by the hydraulic capacities of plants, which have not been uniform through time. The flowering plants that dominate modern vegetation possess transpiration capacities that are dramatically higher than any other plants, living or extinct. Transpiration operates at the level of the leaf, howeve...

Land plants have evolved adaptive regulatory mechanisms enabling the survival of environmental stresses associated with terrestrial life. Here, we focus on the evolution of the regulatory CONSTITUTIVE TRIPLE RESPONSE1 (CTR1) component of the ethylene signaling pathway that modulates stress-related changes in plant growth and development. First, we compare CTR1-like proteins from a bryophyte, Ph...

While there has been strong support for Amborella and Nymphaeales (water lilies) as branching from basal-most nodes in the angiosperm phylogeny, this hypothesis has recently been challenged by phylogenetic analyses of 61 protein-coding genes extracted from the chloroplast genome sequences of Amborella, Nymphaea, and 12 other available land plant chloroplast genomes. These character-rich analyse...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Globally, conifer dominance is restricted to nutient-poor habitats in colder, drier or waterlogged environments, probably due to competition with angiosperms. Analysis of canopy structure is important for understanding the mechanism of plant coexistence in relation to competition for light. Most conifers are shade intolerant, and often have narrow, deep, conical crowns. In t...

Phylogenomic analyses show that gene and genome duplication events have led to the diversification of transcription factor gene families throughout the evolutionary history of land plants and that gene duplications have played an important role in shaping regulatory networks influencing key phenotypic characters including floral development and flowering time. A molecular evolutionary investiga...

Flowering plants (angiosperms) are by far the largest, most diverse, and most important group of land plants, with over 250,000 species and a dominating presence in most terrestrial ecosystems. Understanding the origin and early diversification of angiosperms has posed a long-standing botanical challenge [1]. Numerous morphological and molecular systematic studies have attempted to reconstruct ...

Several shifts from ancestral conifer feeding to angiosperm feeding have been implicated in the unparalleled diversification of beetle species. The single largest angiosperm-feeding beetle clade occurs in the weevils, and comprises the family Curculionidae and relatives. Most authorities confidently place the bark beetles (Scolytidae) within this radiation of angiosperm feeders. However, some c...

The extraordinary contemporary species richness and ecological predominance of flowering plants (angiosperms) are even more remarkable when considering the relatively recent onset of their evolutionary diversification. We examine the evolutionary diversification of angiosperms and the observed differential distribution of species in angiosperm clades by estimating the rate of diversification fo...

Svensson, M., 2000. Evolution of a Family of Plant Genes with Regulatory Functions in Development; Studies on Picea abies and Lycopodium annotinum. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 573. 45 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-4826-7. This work is focused on the molecular genetic basis for morphological change in evol...