A thorny tale: The origin and diversification of Cirsium (Compositae).

Widely distributed plant genera offer insights into biogeographic processes and biodiversity. The Carduus-Cirsium group, with over 600 species in eight genera, is diverse across the Holarctic regions, especially in the Mediterranean Basin, Southwest Asia, Japan, and North America. Despite this diversity, evolutionary and biogeographic processes within the group, particularly for the genus Cirsium, remain underexplored.

Biome conservatism prevailed in repeated long-distance colonization of Madagascar's mountains by Helichrysum (Compositae, Gnaphalieae).

Colonization and diversification processes are responsible for the distinctiveness of island biotas, with Madagascar standing out as abiodiversity hotspot exceptionally rich in species and endemism. Regardless of its significance, the evolutionary history and diversification drivers of Madagascar's flora remain understudied. Here we focus on Helichrysum (Compositae, Gnaphalieae) to investigate the evolutionary and biogeographic origins of the Malagasy flora.

Impact of the climatic changes in the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition on Irano-Turanian species. The radiation of genus Jurinea (Compositae).

The Irano-Turanian region is one of the world's richest floristic regions and the centre of diversity for numerous xerophytic plant lineages. However, we still have limited knowledge on the timing of evolution and biogeographic history of its flora, and potential drivers of diversification remain underexplored. To fill this knowledge gap, we focus on the Eurasian genus Jurinea (ca.

African Mountain Thistles: Three New Genera in the Group.

The floras on the highest mountains in tropical eastern Africa are among the most unique floras in the world. Despite the exceptionally high concentration of endemic species, these floras remain understudied from an evolutionary point of view. In this study, we focus on the group (subtribe Carduinae) to unravel the evolutionary relationships of the species endemic to the tropical Afromontane and Afroalpine floras, aiming to improve the systematics of the group.

Repeatedly Northwards and Upwards: Southern African Grasslands Fuel the Colonization of the African Sky Islands in (Compositae).

The Afromontane and Afroalpine areas constitute some of the main biodiversity hotspots of Africa. They are particularly rich in plant endemics, but the biogeographic origins and evolutionary processes leading to this outstanding diversity are poorly understood. We performed phylogenomic and biogeographic analyses of one of the most species-rich plant genera in these mountains, (Compositae-Gnaphalieae).

Climate Stability Index maps, a global high resolution cartography of climate stability from Pliocene to 2100.

Climate changes are top biodiversity shapers, both during the past and future. Mapping the most climatic stable and unstable zones on Earth could improve our understanding of biodiversity distribution and evolution. Here, we present a set of maps based on a global scale, high resolution (ca.

Phylogeny, origin and dispersal of Saussurea (Asteraceae) based on chloroplast genome data.

Saussurea is one of the largest genera of the tribe Cardueae of Asteraceae, comprising about 460 species from the Northern Hemisphere with most species distributed in QTPss and adjacent areas. Here, we established a well-supported phylogenetic framework for Saussurea based on whole chloroplast genomes of 136 taxa plus 16 additional taxa of Cardueae using Bayesian inference and Maximum Likelihood. Our phylogenetic results are inconsistent with previous subgeneric classifications of Saussurea.

Nuclear and plastid DNA phylogeny of tribe Cardueae (Compositae) with Hyb-Seq data: A new subtribal classification and a temporal diversification framework.

Classification of tribe Cardueae in natural subtribes has always been a challenge due to the lack of support of some critical branches in previous phylogenies based on traditional Sanger markers. With the aim to propose a new subtribal delimitation, we applied a Hyb-Seq approach to a set of 76 Cardueae species representing all subtribes and informal groups defined in the tribe, targeting 1061 nuclear conserved orthology loci (COS) designed for Compositae and obtaining chloroplast coding regions as by-product of off-target reads. For the extraction of the target nuclear data, we used two strategies, PHYLUCE and HybPiper, and 776 and 1055 COS loci were recovered with each of them, respectively.

Phylogeography of western Mediterranean Cymbalaria (Plantaginaceae) reveals two independent long-distance dispersals and entails new taxonomic circumscriptions.

The Balearic Islands, Corsica and Sardinia (BCS) constitute biodiversity hotspots in the western Mediterranean Basin. Oligocene connections and long distance dispersal events have been suggested to cause presence of BCS shared endemic species. One of them is Cymbalaria aequitriloba, which, together with three additional species, constitute a polyploid clade endemic to BCS.

Reconstructing the evolution and biogeographic history of tribe Cardueae (Compositae).

Premise Of The Study: Tribe Cardueae (thistles) forms one of the largest tribes in the family Compositae (2400 species), with representatives in almost every continent. The greatest species richness of Cardueae occurs in the Mediterranean region where it forms an important element of its flora. New fossil evidence and a nearly resolved phylogeny of Cardueae are used here to reconstruct the spatiotemporal evolution of this group.

Morphological and genetic evidence of contemporary intersectional hybridisation in Mediterranean Helichrysum (Asteraceae, Gnaphalieae).

Hybridisation is considered an important evolutionary phenomenon in Gnaphalieae, but contemporary hybridisation has been little explored within the tribe. Here, hybridisation between Helichrysum orientale and Helichrysum stoechas is studied at two different localities in the islands of Crete and Rhodes (Greece). Using three different types of molecular data (AFLP, nrDNA ITS sequences and cpDNA ndhF sequences) and morphological data, the aim is to provide simultaneous and direct comparisons between molecular and morphological variation among the parental species and the studied hybrid populations.

Lessons from Plectocephalus (Compositae, Cardueae-Centaureinae): ITS disorientation in annuals and Beringian dispersal as revealed by molecular analyses.

Background And Aims: The geographic distribution of the genus Plectocephalus comprises a single species in Ethiopia, two in North America and possibly four more in South America, in a striking disjunction that is exceptional for genera of the tribe Cardueae. The enormity of this disjunction cast doubts on the precise taxonomic delineation of the genus, which is not unanimously recognized as a natural entity. The aims of this study were to define the generic boundaries of Plectocephalus and to formulate a hypothesis that would explain its natural range.

Genetic variation in Mediterranean Helichrysum italicum (Asteraceae; Gnaphalieae): do disjunct populations of subsp. microphyllum have a common origin?

The yellow-flowered everlasting daisy Helichrysum italicum (Asteraceae, Gnaphalieae) is widely distributed in the Mediterranean basin, where it grows in continuous and widespread populations in diverse open habitats. Helichrysum italicum subsp. microphyllum has a disjunct distribution in the Balearic Islands (Majorca and Dragonera), Corsica, Sardinia, Crete and Cyprus.