We have cloned and sequenced cDNAs for the glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase of glycolysis, gapC, from a bryophyte, a gymnosperm, and three angiosperms. Phylogenetic analyses are presented for these data in the context of other gapC sequences and in parallel with published nucleotide sequences for the chloroplast encoded gene for the large subunit of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase...

Flowering plants harbor the largest mitochondrial genomes reported so far. At present, the nucleotide sequences of 15 mitochondrial genomes from seven angiosperm species are available, making detailed comparative analysis feasible. The gene content is variable among the species, but the most striking feature is the fluidity of intergenic regions, where species-specific sequences predominate. Ad...

The unicellular conifer tracheid should have greater flow resistance per length (resistivity) than the multicellular angiosperm vessel, because its high-resistance end-walls are closer together. However, tracheids and vessels had comparable resistivities for the same diameter, despite tracheids being over 10 times shorter. End-wall pits of tracheids averaged 59 times lower flow resistance on an...

The recent discovery of a strong positive relationship between angiosperm genome size and stomatal guard cell length (GCL) opens the possibility of using plant fossil guard cell size as a proxy for changes in angiosperm genome size over periods of environmental change. The responses of GCL to environmental stimuli are currently unknown and may obscure this predictive relationship. Here, we inve...

704 American Journal of Botany 98(4): 704–730, 2011; http://www.amjbot.org/ © 2011 Botanical Society of America 1 Manuscript received 11 October 2010; revision accepted 9 February 2011. The authors thank the University of Florida High-Performance Computing Center, the UF Genetics Institute, and facilities supported in part by NSF Grant CNS-0821622 for providing computational resources that faci...

Premise of research: The Cenozoic fossil record is crucial for understanding the evolution of the remarkably high diversity of angiosperms. However, the quality and biases of the angiosperm fossil record remain unclear mainly due to the lack of a global database. Methodology: We introduce a new global occurrence-based database for Cenozoic angiosperm macrofossils, the Cenozoic Angiosperm Databa...

Appreciation has grown for the impact of tropical forest seasonality and fallback foods on primate diets, behaviors, and morphology. As critically important resources in times of shortage, seasonal fallback foods may have an outsized role in selecting for form and function while the diversity of preferred plant foods has played an equally prominent role in shaping primate evolution. Here, hypot...