A foliicolous alga of eocene age

An ascomycete with an anamorphic state was described from Eocene age material from Henry County, Tennessee, U.S.A., as Pelicothallus villosus Dilcher. This organism is reinterpreted as an alga.     

PTEROCARYOID FRUITS (JUGLANDACEAE) IN THE PALEOGENE OF NORTH AMERICA AND THEIR EVOLUTIONARY AND BIOGEOGRAPHIC SIGNIFICANCE

The Juglandaceae (walnut family) has an excellent fossil record of various organs extending back to the earliest Tertiary. Several genera which today are restricted to isolated geographic regions were widespread in the Northern Hemisphere during the Tertiary. This paper focuses upon the fossil record of the Pterocarya alliance of the subfamily Juglandoideae, tribe Juglandeae. The Pterocarya alliance includes only two modern genera, Pterocarya (five species) and Cyclocarya (one species), both restricted to Eurasia. Paleogene sediments of the Rocky Mountain Region have yielded three genera and four species referable to the Pterocarya alliance: Cyclocarya (two species), Pterocarya, and a new genus, Polyptera. Although three of the four Paleogene species described here are attributed to present day genera, each represents an extinct form, which cannot be accommodated by any single living species. These fossils, reviewed with other published reports, indicate that the Pterocarya alliance, like the Engelhardia alliance of the same family, was more diverse and much more widespread geographically in the Tertiary than it is today.     

Palynological assessment of Holocene mangrove vegetation at the American Memorial Park,Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

Pollen and spores recovered from three cores of Holocene to recent deposits from the island of Saipan indicate the presence of mangrove vegetation, including Bruguiera and Acrostichum, on the island previous to World War II. The occurrence of Casuarina equisetifolia Linneaus 1759, from cores elsewhere on the island of Saipan, at depths predating the arrival of humans to the island, suggest that this tree species is endemic to Saipan rather than a recent invasive species. These findings will assist in replanting native vegetation once destroyed through wartime activities on the island.     

Estimation of temperature and precipitation from morphological characters of dicotyledonous leaves

The utility of regression and correspondence models for deducing climate from leaf physiognomy was evaluated by the comparative application of different predictive models to the same three leaf assemblages. Mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and growing season precipitation (GSP) were estimated from the morphological characteristics of samples of living leaves from two extant forests and an assemblage of fossil leaves. The extant forests are located near Gainesville, Florida, and in the Florida Keys; the fossils were collected from the Eocene Clarno Nut Beds, Oregon. Simple linear regression (SLR), multiple linear regression (MLR), and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) were used to estimate temperature and precipitation. The SLR models used only the percentage of species having entire leaf margins as a predictor for MAT and leaf size as a predictor for MAP. The MLR models used from two to six leaf characters as predictors, and the CCA used 31 characters. In comparisons between actual and predicted values for the extant forests, errors in prediction of MAT were 0.6°-5.7°C, and errors in prediction of precipitation were 6-89 cm (=6-66%). At the Gainesville site, seven models underestimated MAT and only one overestimated it, whereas at the Keys site, all eight models overestimated MAT. Precipitation was overestimated by all four models at Gainesville, and by three of them at the Keys. The MAT estimates from the Clarno leaf assemblage ranged from 14.3° to 18.8°C, and the precipitation estimates from 227 to 363 cm for MAP and from 195 to 295 cm for GSP.     

Fruits and foliage of Pueraria (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae) from the Neogene of Eurasia and their biogeographic implications

? Premise of the study: Pueraria (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae) is native in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania and is well known as a rampant invasive weed in the southeastern United States (P. montana; better known as kudzu), but relatively little is known about its early evolution and biogeographic origin. ? Methods: On the basis of comparative analyses of the fruit and leaflet architecture of closely related extant and fossil taxa, we studied the fossil history and biogeography of Pueraria. ? Key results: Fossil Pueraria is recognized on the basis of distinctive fruit and foliage from the Mio-Pliocene of middle latitudes in China, Japan, Abkhazia, and Croatia. Recognition of P. miothunbergiana from the Mio-Pliocene of China and Japan is reinforced by a trifoliolate leaf as well as isolated lateral and terminal leaflets. Pueraria shanwangensis sp. nov. represents the first recognition of fossil Pueraria fruits. This fruit species co-occurs with P. miothunbergiana in the Middle Miocene Shanwang flora and possibly represents the same population. Pueraria maxima (Unger) comb. nov., previously named as Dolichites maximus or Desmodium maximum, is recognized on the basis of leaflets from the Miocene of Croatia and Abkhazia. Other prior fossil reports of Pueraria and Dolichites are reevaluated. ? Conclusions: Pueraria had begun to diversify by at least the Middle Miocene and had spread into the Mio-Pliocene subtropical and temperate floras of the Balkan Peninsula, the Caucasus, and eastern Asia, which suggests the present diversity of this genus in tropical Asia and Oceania might have originated from the mid-latitudes of Eurasia.     

Phylogeny of extant and fossil Juglandaceae inferred from the integration of molecular and morphological data sets

It is widely acknowledged that integrating fossils into data sets of extant taxa is imperative for proper placement of fossils, resolution of relationships, and a better understanding of character evolution. The importance of this process has been further magnified because of the crucial role of fossils in dating divergence times. Outstanding issues remain, including appropriate methods to place fossils in phylogenetic trees, the importance of molecules versus morphology in these analyses, as well as the impact of potentially large amounts of missing data for fossil taxa. In this study we used the angiosperm clade Juglandaceae as a model for investigating methods of integrating fossils into a phylogenetic framework of extant taxa. The clade has a rich fossil record relative to low extant diversity, as well as a robust molecular phylogeny and morphological database for extant taxa. After combining fossil organ genera into composite and terminal taxa, our objectives were to (1) compare multiple methods for the integration of the fossils and extant taxa (including total evidence, molecular scaffolds, and molecular matrix representation with parsimony [MRP]); (2) explore the impact of missing data (incomplete taxa and characters) and the evidence for placing fossils on the topology; (3) simulate the phylogenetic effect of missing data by creating "artificial fossils"; and (4) place fossils and compare the impact of single and multiple fossil constraints in estimating the age of clades. Despite large and variable amounts of missing data, each of the methods provided reasonable placement of both fossils and simulated "artificial fossils" in the phylogeny previously inferred only from extant taxa. Our results clearly show that the amount of missing data in any given taxon is not by itself an operational guideline for excluding fossils from analysis. Three fossil taxa (Cruciptera simsonii, Paleoplatycarya wingii, and Platycarya americana) were placed within crown clades containing living taxa for which relationships previously had been suggested based on morphology, whereas Polyptera manningii, a mosaic taxon with equivocal affinities, was placed firmly as sister to two modern crown clades. The position of Paleooreomunnea stoneana was ambiguous with total evidence but conclusive with DNA scaffolds and MRP. There was less disturbance of relationships among extant taxa using a total evidence approach, and the DNA scaffold approach did not provide improved resolution or internal support for clades compared to total evidence, whereas weighted MRP retained comparable levels of support but lost crown clade resolution. Multiple internal minimum age constraints generally provided reasonable age estimates, but the use of single constraints provided by extinct genera tended to underestimate clade ages.     

Development of a Flow-Trough Microarray based Reverse Transcriptase Multiplex Ligation-Dependent Probe Amplification Assay for the Detection of European Bunyaviruses

It is suspected that apart from tick-borne encephalitis virus several additional European Arboviruses such as the sandfly borne Toscana virus, sandfly fever Sicilian virus and sandfly fever Naples virus, mosquito-borne Tahyna virus, Inkoo virus, Batai virus and tick-borne Uukuniemi virus cause aseptic meningo-encephalitis or febrile disease in Europe. Currently, the microarray technology is developing rapidly and there are many efforts to apply it to infectious diseases diagnostics. In order to arrive at an assay system useful for high throughput analysis of samples from aseptic meningo-encephalitis cases the authors developed a combined multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification and flow-through microarray assay for the detection of European Bunyaviruses. These results show that this combined assay indeed is highly sensitive, and specific for the accurate detection of multiple viruses.     

Welwitschiaceae from the Lower Cretaceous of northeastern Brazil

Welwitschiaceae, a family in the Gnetales, is known today from only one extant species, Welwitschia mirabilis. This species is distributed in the Namibian desert, along the western coast of southern Africa, about 10 km inland from the coast. Very little is known about the fossil record of this family. Lower Cretaceous megafossils of various organs, assigned to Welwitschiaceae, are presented here. These fossils include young stems with paired cotyledons attached (Welwitschiella austroamericana n. gen. et sp.), isolated leaves (Welwitschiophyllum brasiliense n. gen. et sp.), and axes bearing male cones (Welwitschiostrobus murili n. gen. et sp.). They were collected in the Crato Formation, which is dated by palynomorphs and ostracods as Late Aptian (114 to 112 million years ago). These sediments are exposed in the Araripe Basin of northeastern Brazil. This study brings together new information of the megafossil record of Welwitschia-like plants and also reports of pollen said to be similar to that of Welwitschia from Lower Cretaceous sediments.     

A review of recent advances in the study of early angiosperms from northeastern China

The last 10 years (1998–2007) were very productive and important in the study of early angiosperms in northeastern China. The new discoveries of the earliest well-documented records of angiosperms such as Archaefructus, as well as Hyrcantha decussata (= Sinocarpus decussatus), provided fresh knowledge for better understanding the primitive characters of the ancient angiosperms and also their aquatic (or wet) habitat and their herbaceous nature. Some new approaches such as the combination of molecular and morphological characters joined together to place Archaefructus in the angiosperm phylogenetic framework. These fossils demonstrate that we should expect more ancient angiosperms to be found in the pre-Cretaceous which will continue to add important new understanding to the nature of the origin and evolution of the angiosperms.