AToL: Collaborative Research: Resolving the Trunk of the Angiosperm Tree and 12 of its Thorniest Branches

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Intellectual Merit: Flowering plants (angiosperms) are the largest (270,000 species), most diverse, and economically most important group of green plants. Understanding the origin, patterns of variation, and relationships among angiosperms is challenging. Despite progress, relationships among major groups remain unclear, as do relationships within major subgroups (e.g., roses and allies). Our multigene and genomics approaches target 12 problematic groups and subgroups; their resolution should clarify the framework for angiosperm phylogeny. We also will develop the first comprehensive non-DNA database for angiosperms and populate it with key morphological features. Together, our approaches will lay groundwork for collaboratively building the tree of all 12,000 genera of angiosperms. Broader Impacts: The angiosperm tree will be useful to comparative biologists including physiologists, ecologists, paleobiologists, and genomicists. The Botany Browser we develop will provide an informatics infrastructure to bring many data resources to users' desktops. The Angiosperm MorphBank will facilitate group diagnosis, analyses of character distributions, and study of fossils. Our interdisciplinary training of postdoctoral fellows and students will emphasize recruitment of minorities. Our website on angiosperm diversity will be valuable to researchers, K-12 teachers, and students. We will construct pages for the Tree of Life Web Project including TreeHouses designed for K-12 students and teachers. A movable museum exhibit highlighting advances in our understanding of plant phylogeny will be distributed to museums represented in our project. Posters detailing the angiosperm tree will be designed and distributed and made available on CD. Additional outreach will be provided through presentations to local public schools.