Scientists repot flowering plants ’ tree of life—and find it has tangled roots

About 150 million years ago, life on Earth began a complete revamp, thanks to the rapid rise of one giant group: the flowering plants, or angiosperms. The more efficient photosynthesis of magnolias, waterlilies, as well as many early  lineages now extinct pumped oxygen into the atmosphere, and their nectar and fruits provided new types of food for insects and other animals, fueling new, more complex ecosystems that still dominate the planet today. The sprouting of angiosperms happened so fast that the origins of certain groups has long been mired in mystery. Now, almost 300 plant biologists have banded together to resolve the tangled roots of today’s 330,000 angiosperm species. Their new tree of life for flowering plants , reported today in Nature , largely confirms and extends previous reconstructions—but also suggests a few surprising ancestries. Such knowledge could improve medicines derived from plants and help preserve biodiversity, says Lucas Majure, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University of Florida (UF) who was not involved in the work. It’s “an excellent synthesis,” Majure says. “It puts forth a fresh perspective on evolutionary relationships across the most important group of plants on the planet.” Most past assessments of plant evolution have compared DNA from plants’ photosynthesizing organelles known as chloroplasts. Their small genomes and many DNA copies made them “easier to look at,” Douglas S...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news