From cacti to carnivores: improved phylotranscriptomic sampling and hierarchical homology inference provide further insight into the evolution of Caryophyllales

Premise of the Study— The Caryophyllales contains ~12,500 species and is known for its cosmopolitan distribution, convergence of trait evolution, and extreme adaptations. Some relationships within the Caryophyllales, like those of many large plant clades, remain unclear and phylogenetic studies often recover alternative hypotheses. We explore the utility of broad and dense transcriptome sampling across the order for resolving evolutionary relationships in Caryophyllales.
Methods— We generated 84 transcriptomes and combined these with 224 publicly available transcriptomes to perform a phylogenomic analysis of Caryophyllales. To overcome the computational challenge of ortholog detection in such a large data set, we developed an approach for clustering gene families that allowed us to analyze >300 transcriptomes and genomes. We then inferred the species relationships using multiple methods and performed gene tree conflict analyses.
Key Results— Our phylogenetic analyses resolved man...