Re: [Aroid-l] Adelonema

From: Christopher Rogers <branchiopod at gmail.com> on 2011.11.28 at 15:18:12(22432) Thank you Peter and Lars! I must echo Jason and Leland's comments on paleobotany. I know far more about the animals than the plants. But I should being a professional zoologist. So, I am far more familiar with the biogeography of my beloved crustaceans. The group I specialize in (Branchiopoda) shows a somewhat similar pattern: one close relationship at both low and high taxonomic levels between the Nearctic and the Palaearctic and a second close relationship between the Afrotropical, Oriental and Australian. The Neotropics are an odd outlier. Only one genus is in common with the Afrotropical, and only two genera and one species is in common with the Nearctic. With my organisms, the Neotropical taxa seem to have mostly evolved in isolation from the other major regions. How reliable is the molecular data? It seems to me that in the Araceae there must be deep divergence, which would mask some relationships. I guess the Jurassic is maybe not as old as my Cambrian crustaceans, but plants do seem far more flexible both genetically and morphologically. Happy days, Christopher HTML +More On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Peter Boyce wrote: Yes, indeed, still in Spathiphylleae. Never re-collected from Sumatera, but that island still holds many “secrets”, including what appears to be a new genus of Schismatoglottideae. There is also the ‘odd’ occurrence of Piptospatha on Aru. -- D. Christopher Rogers ((,///////////=======

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