Circumscription and phylogeny of the fern family Tectariaceae based on plastid and nuclear markers, with the description of two new genera: Draconopteris and Malaifilix (Tectariaceae)

Abstract

The circumscription and the phylogeny of the fern family Tectariaceae have been controversial. Previous molecular studies have supported the monophyly of this family, with 4–5 genera. However, these studies were exclusively based on plastid markers and relatively small sampling, especially of the non‐Tectaria genera. In the present study, DNA sequences of eight plastid and one nuclear markers of 25 accessions representing 19 species of Tectaria and 58 accessions representing ca. 90% of the non‐Tectaria species in the family (including Arthropteris) were used to infer a phylogeny using maximum likelihood (ML), Bayesian inference, and maximum parsimony. Our major results include: (1) Tectaria as currently circumscribed is not monophyletic and can be divided into three genera: Tectaria s.str., Draconopteris (gen. nov.) from Central to South America, and Malaifilix (gen. nov.) from Malesia; (2) Draconopteris and Malaifilix, the two new genera, together with Pteridrys, form a strongly supported clade; (3) in our ML analyses, the clade containing Draconopteris, Malaifilix, and Pteridrys (the DMP clade) is resolved as sister to the rest of Tectariaceae and Arthropteris is sister to Tectaria + (Hypoderris + Triplophyllum), suggesting that Arthropteris should be treated as a member of Tectariaceae, and thus Tectariaceae contains seven genera: Arthropteris, Draconopteris, Hypoderris, Malaifilix, Pteridrys, Tectaria, and Triplophyllum; (4) with the well‐supported relationships among the members of Tectariaceae, anastomosing venation in the family is inferred to have evolved independently at least three times; (5) Nephrolepis is strongly supported as sister to a clade containing Cyclopeltis, Dracoglossum, and Lomariopsis, and thus we advocate that Lomariopsidaceae include these four genera (plus the unsampled Thysanosoria); and (6) intercontinental dispersal appears to have played an important role in shaping the extant distribution of Tectariaceae.

A community‐derived classification for extant lycophytes and ferns

“…Circumscription sensu Hennequin et al (). Monophyletic (Hennequin et al, ; Zhang et al, ). 19 species. …”

“…Circumscription sensu Christenhusz et al (). Monophyletic (Christenhusz et al, ; Zhang et al, ). Four genera and an estimated 69 species.…”

A plastid phylogeny and character evolution of the Old World fern genus Pyrrosia (Polypodiaceae) with the description of a new genus: Hovenkampia (Polypodiaceae)

“…A comparison of the trees resulting from MPJK analyses of the individual plastid markers and the combined plastid dataset did not identify any well-supported conflicts in MP analyses (MPJK ! 70%; MasonGamer and Kellogg, 1996;Zhang and Simmons, 2006;Zhang et al, 2015Zhang et al, , 2016Zhou et al, 2016). The five plastid markers were therefore concatenated and analyzed in unison.…”

Correction to the misapplication of the name Tectaria subsageniacea (Tectariaceae) in China

“…The fern genus Tectaria Cavanilles (1799: 115) was established to accommodate some species with scattered and indusiate sori, and in modern sense has been demonstrated to be a morphologically much diverse group in Tectariaceae (Ding et al 2014, Moran et al 2014, Wang et al 2014, Zhang et al 2016. It is estimated that there are about 250 extant species of Tectaria across the tropics and subtropics of the world (Zhao & Dong 2015).…”