Search

[Display omitted] • We reconstructed the phylogenies of Lepisorus based on nuclear markers. • All the allied small segregates are deeply nested within Lepisorus. • The cytonuclear discordance may indicate ancient hybridization events or incomplete lineage sorting. • Molecular and morphological evidence does not support the segregation of Ellipinema and × Ellipisorus from Lepisorus. The establishment of a segregate lepisoroid fern genus Ellipinema was mainly to accommodate the isolated position of Lepisorus jakonensis (Polypodiaceae) recovered in plastid gene tree. Using newly obtained nuclear data, we recovered that Ellipinema and allied genera, such as Lepidomicrosorium , Lemmaphyllum , Neolepisorus , Paragramma , Tricholepidium and Weatherbya are deeply nested within Lepisorus. The nuclear phylogeny showing incongruent phylogenetic placement in comparison with plastid results perhaps indicated ancient hybridization events. The diagnostic morphology characterizing Ellipinema – elliptic scale-like paraphyses, which is shared by all the taxa of sect. Lepisorus and sect. Hymenophyton – falls within the range of continuous variation in the type species Ellipinema jakonense (= Lepisorus jakonensis). Our study, which integrated molecular and morphological data, demonstrates that the segregation of Ellipinema and × Ellipisorus (= × Lepinema Li Bing Zhang & Liang Zhang, nom. illeg.) from Lepisorus should be rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lady fern genus Athyrium represents one of the most diversified lineages in Athyriaceae with about 160–220 known species, and is notorious for its taxonomic difficulty. Despite progress in recent phylogenetic studies involving this genus, it still lacks a modern systematic and taxonomic update using integrative analyses of molecular and morphological evidence based on a broad species sampling. Here, we present, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the genus to date based on a total-evidence approach, covering all formerly accepted segregates within the athyrioid ferns. We sampled up to eight plastid markers and 20 morphological characters for each species. Our analyses, including maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference, yield a robust phylogenetic framework. We find that Athyrium is not monophyletic by recovering Athyrium skinneri and A. alpestre nested with Anisocampium and Cornopteris respectively while Pseudocystopteris is included in Athyrium . Furthermore, eight well-resolved clades and two isolated species within Athyrium are found in the phylogenetic topology, which can be also characterized by morphological synapomorphies from traits of petioles, leaves, sori and spores. In the interest of recognizing monophyletic taxa with morphological synapomorphies, we agree with the inclusion of Pseudocystopteris in Athyrium as proposed in previous studies, but treat Anisocampium and Cornopteris as separate genera. We further propose to resurrect a monotypic Pseudathyrium to accommodate A. alpestre . Based on morphological characters and molecular phylogeny, a new infrageneric classification system of Athyrium is proposed which subdivided it into ten sections, and one New-World species A. skinneri is transferred into Anisocampium . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]