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Australian Systematic Botany Australian Systematic Botany Society
Taxonomy, biogeography and evolution of plants
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Perssoniella and the genera of Schistochilaceae: a new classification based on molecular phylogenies

Xiaolan He A C and David Glenny B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Botanical Museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History, University of Helsinki, PO Box 7, FIN-00014 Helsinki, Finland.

B Allan Herbarium, Landcare Research, PO Box 40, Lincoln 7640, New Zealand.

C Corresponding author. Email: xiao-lan.he@helsinki.fi

Australian Systematic Botany 23(4) 229-238 https://doi.org/10.1071/SB10007
Submitted: 22 February 2010  Accepted: 21 May 2010   Published: 31 August 2010

Abstract

The monotypic genus Perssoniella with P. vitreocincta Herzog, endemic to New Caledonia, possesses a series of unique morphological characters and it has been assumed that the genus, assigned to the family Perssoniellaceae and suborder Perssoniellineae, is very isolated but sister to the family Schistochilaceae. The systematic identity of Perssoniella vitreocincta was studied using DNA sequence data for the chloroplast rbcL, rps4 and trnL-F regions. Our analyses placed Perssoniella vitreocincta within the family Schistochilaceae, and within Schistochila itself, with strong support. It suggests that retaining Perssoniella as an independent genus is untenable and we transfer it to the genus Schistochila. Our results indicate that Perssoniella vitreocincta is not an archaic species, as presupposed earlier. The differentiating characters in Perssoniella are mostly probably later derived, rather than ancestral. Our analyses also placed Pachyschistochila and Paraschistochila within Schistochila, again with strong support. We also transfer these two genera to Schistochila.


Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the Herbaria F, GOET and H for loans for this study. The senior author is grateful to the Academy of Finland for research funding. The junior author was funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research in Science and Technology through the OBI ‘Discovering New Zealand’s biota’. We thank two anonymous reviewers and an anonymous associate editor of the Journal for providing insightful comments.


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