Poster

         Bryology and Lichenology

One probe to unmask them all

Presenting Author
Raul Diaz San Roman
Description
Orthotrichaceae Arn. is the second most speciose family among mosses, with an estimated of ca. 900 described taxa. This family is further divided into two subfamilies, Orthotrichoideae Broth. and Macromitrioideae Broth., which exhibit distinct morphological, biogeographic and ecological traits. Orthotrichoideae is better known from both phylogenetic and species diversity points of view. During the last two decades, the taxonomic complexity of the traditional major genera has been unraveled, although the diversity could still be gratly underestimated. The use of genomics data has proven to be a powerful tool in the field of systematics and evolutionary biology. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) can generate vast amount of data, resulting in increased genealogical resolution compared to the traditional Sanger approach. Among the newest and most promising NGS methodologies is Hyb-Seq, a mixed method that combines aleatory sequencing through genome skimming, with target capture sequencing. This approach has been succesfully enployed to efficiently produce genome-sclae data sets for plants phylogenomics that can help to resolve the relationships among closely related species and to determine species boundaries. This is especially valuable for studying groups with few, and often homoplasious, morphological characters, such is the case of Orthotrichaceae, in which systematic and taxonomic delimitations, have been traditionally difficult and contentious. Recently, a target enrichment probe specific to flagellate land plants was developed in the GoFlag project frame. The GoFlag408 enrichment kit, designed to capture up to 408 exons from 229 nuclear genes, has proved to be useful in resolving the phylogeny of Orthotrichoideae, since the resolution obtained is increased when compared to previous phylogenetic reconstructions, based on Sanger sequencing. However, incongruent signals and resolution problems were detected within the tribe Lewinskyinae that make difficult the resolution of its infrageneric systematic. To solve this problem, we intend to develop a specific probe for the family Orthotrichaceae. With the use of a new specific kit, we aim to achieve a complete and robust phylogenetic reconstruction of Orthotrichoideae and to establish solid bases and conclusions related with its taxonomic, evolution and biogeography. In addition, it is expected to unravel cryptic species and contribute to the resolution of species complexes, and thus, unmasking the possibly hidden diversity of this group of mosses.