Phylogenomics indicates the "living fossil" Isoetes diversified in the Cenozoic.

ABSTRACT: The fossil record provides an invaluable insight into the temporal origins of extant lineages of organisms. However, establishing the relationships between fossils and extant lineages can be difficult in groups with low rates of morphological change over time. Molecular dating can potentially circumvent this issue by allowing distant fossils to act as calibration points, but rate variation across large evolutionary scales can bias such analyses. In this study, we apply multiple dating methods to genome-wide datasets to infer the origin of extant species of Isoetes, a group of mostly aquatic and semi-aquatic isoetalean lycopsids, which closely resemble fossil forms dating back to the Triassic. Rate variation observed in chloroplast genomes hampers accurate dating, but genome-wide nuclear ma

SUBMITTER: Wood D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7302493 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature