Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2015, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (4): 473-481.DOI: 10.11983/CBB14152

• EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNICATIONS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Phylogeny of Stixeae and Borthwickiaceae Based on Morphological and Molecular Data

Huiling Zhao1,2, Limin Lu2, Junxia Su1*, Zhiduan Chen2   

  1. 1School of Life Sciences, Shanxi Normal University, Linfen 041004, China
    2State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
  • Received:2014-08-21 Accepted:2015-01-27 Online:2015-07-01 Published:2015-05-07
  • Contact: Su Junxia
  • About author:

    ? These authors contributed equally to this paper

Abstract: Stixeae (including Stixis, Tirania, Neothorelia and Forchhammeria) and Borthwickia have traditionally been placed in Capparaceae. Recent molecular and morphological studies suggest Borthwickia as a new monotypic family. However, the positions and taxonomic ranks of Stixeae remain unresolved. To estimate the relationships of Stixeae, we reconstructed the phylogeny of the Gyrostemonaceae-Resedaceae-Forchhammeria-Tirania (GRFT) clade of the core Brassicales using maximum parsimony and Bayesian analysis with 20 morphological characters and five DNA regions (matK, rbcL, ndhF, trnL-F, and ITS). Our results strongly support Neothorelia as a new member of the GRFT clade; Neothorelia, Tirania and Stixis form a clade with strong support. The systematic position of Forchhammeria is still uncertain; molecular and morphological evidence support Borthwickiaceae as a new monotypic family.