New insight into the taxonomy of Cephaloziellaceae (Marchantiophyta): the family of the smallest higher plants on Earth

Vadim A Bakalin; Yulia D Maltseva; Ksenia G Klimova; Van Sinh Nguyen; Seung Se Choi; Aleksey V Troitsky

doi:10.3389/fpls.2024.1326810

New insight into the taxonomy of Cephaloziellaceae (Marchantiophyta): the family of the smallest higher plants on Earth

Front Plant Sci. 2024 Feb 29:15:1326810. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1326810. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Vadim A Bakalin¹, Yulia D Maltseva¹, Ksenia G Klimova¹, Van Sinh Nguyen², Seung Se Choi³, Aleksey V Troitsky⁴

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Cryptogamic Biota, Botanical Garden-Institute Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS), Vladivostok, Russia.
² Department of Plant Ecology, Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources, Graduate University of Science and Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Ha Noi, Vietnam.
³ Team of National Ecosystem Survey, National Institute of Ecology, Seocheon, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

Abstract

An analysis of the phylogeny of Cephaloziellaceae was carried out based on trees constructed for previously and newly obtained sequences of five genes: nuclear ITS1-2 and chloroplast trnL-F, trnG, rbcL, and psbA. Phylogenetic trees inferred from different genes are congruent for the main details; however, the position of several taxa is variable. As a result, a new phylogenetic system of the family was proposed. The narrow genus concept seems to be more appropriate for the family. Cephaloziella spinicaulis is segregated into the new genus Douiniella, the generic status for Prionolobus and Metacephalozia is confirmed, and the dubious generic status of Kymatocalyx is substantiated. The generic independence of Cylindrocolea from Cephaloziella s. str. is confirmed. The small amount of data hinders the description of two more genera from Cephaloziella s.l.

Keywords: Cephaloziella; Cephaloziopsis; ITS1–2; Metacephalozia; psbA; rbcL; trnG; trnL–F.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The work of VB, YM, and KK is within the frame of the institutional research project “Cryptogamic Biota of Pacific Asia” (no. 122040800088-5). The work of VN was supported by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (NVCC09.01/23-24). The work of SC was partially supported by a grant from the National Ecosystem Survey of the National Institute of Ecology (NIE-A-2023-01) of Korea. The work of AT is within the frame of the institutional research project # AAAA-A17-117120540067-0 “Genosystematics of Eukaryotes”.