The authors' large time-calibrated phylogeny provides a significant step towards completing a fully sampled species-level phylogeny for Solanaceae, and provides age estimates for the whole family, and is one of the best sampled angiosperm family phylogenies both in terms of taxon sampling and resolution published thus far.
The current results corroborate previous studies that identify a monophyletic subfamily Solanoideae and the more inclusive "x = 12" clade, which includes Nicotiana and the Australian tribe Anthocercideae, and provide greater resolution among lineages within Solanoidesae.
Analysis of sequence data from the chloroplast gene ndhF identifies at least 12 major well-supported clades within the genus Solanum, and non-molecular synapomorphies are proposed for many of the clades.
Sharp prickles and/or stellate hairs evolved more than once in Solanum, and floral heterandry originated multiple times within the ‘‘spiny solanums’’ waxy.
A phylogenetic analysis of the Solanaceae based on chloroplast DNA variation is presented, providing the basis for a provisional new infrafamilial classification.
The data suggest that most traditionally recognized Solanum subgenera are not monophyletic, and provides a framework for directed sampling in further phylogenetic studies, and identifies natural groups for focused revisionary work.
This study shows in a statistical framework that a particular character transition is irreversible, consistent with Dollo's law, and argues that current phylogenetic methods of reconstruction are potentially inadequate in cases where ancestral state information is inferred by using only the phylogeny and the distribution of character states in extant taxa.
DNA sequence data are used to show that eggplants arose in Africa and were dispersed throughout the Middle East to Asia, providing the most comprehensive evidence to date for the evolution of the cultivated eggplant.
The first phylogenetic reconstruction of African and Madagascan species of Solanum subgenus Leptostemonum is presented, with 62 of 76 species native to these areas, plus an additional seven species of largely Asian distribution, using internal transcribed spacer (ITS), waxy and trnT-F regions.