Character evolution in pleurocarpous mosses: a phylogenetic study focusing on the Lembophyllaceae/Neckeraceae - clade

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dietmar Quandt
• Subject Area: Evolution and Systematics of Plants and Fungi
• Term: from 2005 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5446910

The morphological diversity of epiphytic pleurocarpous mosses and their recent rapid radiation is one of the most challenging problems in bryology. As current concepts of character evolution are largely misleading, thorough phylogenetic analyses combining molecular and morphological data are needed and crucial for understanding the evolution of pleurocarpous mosses. In this study we will focus on two closely related families, Lembophyllaceae and Neckeraceae. Aims of this study are: 1) to reconstruct well supported phylogenies of the families using both morphological and DNA sequence data 2) to pinpoint the ancestral clades of the Neckeraceae/Lembophyllaceae within pleurocarps, and 3) to study the evolution of morphological characters within this group. The phylogenetic analyses will comprise state of the art approaches such as maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference as well as parsimony-based methods. Phylogenetic analyses will be performed a) on manually aligned sequence data, guided by DNA/RNA secondary structure calculations and analyses of molecular patterns, and b) applying direct optimization a novel parsimony-based algorithm. The thorough analyses will provide new insights into the modes and rates of molecular evolution in pleurocarps, present a new phylogenetic concept of the study group and identify morphological synapomorphies. We will clarify if the evolution of the currently used diagnostic morphological traits is a result of an independent adaptive evolution, especially to epiphytic habitats that occurred several times independently in the sampled lineages and perhaps in pleuocarpous mosses in general.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants