The Chloroplast Land Plant Phylogeny: Analyses Employing Better-Fitting Tree- and Site-Heterogeneous Composition Models.

ABSTRACT: The colonization of land by descendants of charophyte green algae marked a turning point in Earth history that enabled the development of the diverse terrestrial ecosystems we see today. Early land plants diversified into three gametophyte-dominant lineages, namely the hornworts, liverworts, and mosses, collectively known as bryophytes, and a sporophyte-dominant lineage, the vascular plants, or tracheophytes. In recent decades, the prevailing view of evolutionary relationships among these four lineages has been that the tracheophytes were derived from a bryophyte ancestor. However, recent phylogenetic evidence has suggested that bryophytes are monophyletic, and thus that the first split among land plants gave rise to the lineages that today we recognize as the bryophytes and tracheophytes.

SUBMITTER: Sousa F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7373204 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature