Phylogenetic relationships of Brachistus and Witheringia (Solanaceae)

The neotropical physaloid genera Witheringia and Brachistus have long been subject to taxonomic confusion.  We obtained tissue from well-documented species of these genera, including multiple accessions from widespread taxa, to generate a molecular systematic framework. We present Bayesian phylogenies based on sequences of one chloroplast (trnL-trnF) and two nuclear loci (ITS and waxy).  The major findings are that: 1) Witheringia and Brachistus together form a well-supported monophyletic group, 2) Brachistus is nested within Witheringia, 3) two Mexican endemic species represent the earliest diverging lineages of the clade, 4) several proposed synonyms represent distinct species, and 5) sequenced accessions include several new species awaiting description. The four currently recognized species of Brachistus are transferred to Witheringia, necessitating the new combination Witheringia knappiae (Mont.-Castro & Sousa-Peña) Bohs, comb. nov., and Athenaea affinis C.V. Morton is lectotypi..., DNA was extracted from 31 ingroup accessions, with 29 of these collected by the authors. Ingroup sequences were obtained by Sanger sequencing at three loci: ITS, waxy, and trnL-F.  Sequences for eight outgroup taxa were procured from GenBank. Sequences were aligned using Geneious and adjusted by eye., , # Data from: Phylogenetic relationships of Brachistus and Witheringia (Solanaceae)

The data consists of Nexus files containing aligned DNA sequences for 31 accessions of plants from the genera Witheringia and Brachistus, together with eight outgroup taxa, all in the Solanaceae. Four files are provided: one for each of the three loci, and one containing the three loci combined. To produce the overall phylogenetic tree, alignments for each of the three loci were combined and treated as separate partitions. The combined data matrix contains 3640 aligned characters: 649 for ITS, 1775 for *waxy*, and 1216 for trnL-F. A \"character\" in this context is a nucleotide base or a gap inserted to maintain alignment of sequences.

## Description of the data and file structure

The data are in executable files adhering to Nexus file structure. Briefly, the files include information on the number of taxa, names of taxa, number of characters, and the data matrix. The combined data set includes i...