A Comparison of Morphological, Chemical and Molecular Characters in Some Parmelioid Genera

Abstract

AbstractMorphological and chemical data from 64 genera of Parmeliaceae, including the most common genera in Europe, were analysed by means of neighbour–joining and parsimony analysis. Two presence/absence matrices were constructed, one for the 64 genera and a smaller one for the most common European genera. Probabilities were too low to allow grouping of the genera and only a few pairs of genera had a probability of >50% for both matrices. A molecular matrix (nuclear rDNA-ITS) of the most common genera in Europe was constructed and analysed by the method of maximum likelihood. These results were much more informative than the non-molecular matrix for establishing phylogenetic relationships among the genera.