Malpighiales

Malpighiales
flower of Alexandrian Laurel (Calophyllum inophyllum)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae (unranked): angiosperms (unranked): eudicots (unranked): rosids Order: Malpighiales Martius
Families
See text.

Malpighiales is one of the largest orders of flowering plants, containing about 16000 species, approximately 7.8% of the eudicots. ^[1] The order is very diverse and hard to recognize except with molecular phylogenetic evidence. It is not part of any of the classification systems that are based only on plant morphology. Molecular clock calculations estimate the origin of stem group Malpighiales at around 100 Mya (million years ago) and the origin of crown group Malpighiales at about 90 Mya. ^[2]

Malpighiales is divided into 32 to 42 families, depending upon which clades in the order are given the taxonomic rank of family. ^[3] The largest family, by far, is Euphorbiaceae, with about 6300 species in about 245 genera. ^[4]

In a 2009 study of DNA sequences of 13 genes, 42 families were placed into 16 groups, ranging in size from one to ten families. Almost nothing is known about the relationships among these 16 groups. ^[3] Malpighiales and Lamiales are the two large orders whose phylogeny remains mostly unresolved. ^[5]

Affinities

Malpighiales is a member of a supraordinal group called the COM clade, which consists of the orders Celastrales, Oxalidales, and Malpighiales. ^[6] Some describe it as containing a fourth order, Huales, separating the family Huaceae into its own order, separate from Oxalidales. ^[7]

Some recent studies have placed Malpighiales as sister to Oxalidales sensu lato (including Huaceae), ^{[8] [3]} while others have found a different topology for the COM clade. ^{[6] [9] [2]}

The COM clade is part of an unranked group known as Fabidae or eurosids I. ^[10] The fabids, in turn, are part of a group that has long been recognized, namely, the rosids. ^[11]

History

The family Malpighiaceae was the type family for one of the orders created by Jussieu in his classic work, Genera Plantarum in 1789. ^[12] Friedrich von Berchtold and Jan Presl described such an order in 1820. ^[13] Unlike modern taxonomists, these authors did not use the suffix "ales" in naming their orders. The name "Malpighiales" is attributed by some to Carl von Martius. ^[11] In the twentieth century, it was usually associated with John Hutchinson, who used it in all three editions of his book, The Families of Flowering Plants. ^[14] The name was not used by those who wrote later, in the nineteen seventies, eighties, and nineties.

The first semblance of Malpighiales as we now know it came from a phylogeny of seed plants published in 1993 and based upon DNA sequences of the gene rbcL. ^[15] This study recovered a group of rosids unlike any group found in any previous system of plant classification. In order to make a clear break with classification systems being used at that time, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group resurrected Hutchinson's name, even though his concept of Malpighiales included much of what is now in Celastrales and Oxalidales. ^[16]

Circumscription

Malpighiales is monophyletic and in molecular phylogenetic studies, it receives strong statistical support. ^[1] Since the APG II system was published in 2003, minor changes to the circumscription of the order have been made. The family Peridiscaceae has been expanded from two genera, to three, and then to four, and transferred to Saxifragales. ^{[3] [17]}

The genera Cyrillopsis (Ixonanthaceae), Centroplacus (Centroplacaceae), Bhesa (Centroplacaceae), Aneulophus (Erythroxylaceae), Ploiarium (Bonnetiaceae), Trichostephanus (Samydaceae), Sapria (Rafflesiaceae), Rhizanthes (Rafflesiaceae), and Rafflesia (Rafflesiaceae) had been either added or confirmed as members of Malpighiales by the end of 2009. ^[3]

Some family delimitations have changed as well, most notably, the segregation of Calophyllaceae from Clusiaceae senso lato when it was shown that the latter is paraphyletic. ^[3] Some differences of opinion on family delimitation exist as well. For example, Samydaceae and Scyphostegiaceae may be recognized as families or included in a large version of Salicaceae. ^[18]

Phylogeny

As we know it in 2009, the phylogeny of Malpighiales is, at its deepest level, an unresolved sexadecatomy (16 clades). It has been estimated that complete resolution of the phylogeny will require at least 25000 base pairs of DNA sequence data per taxon. ^[19] A similar situation exists with Lamiales and it has been analyzed in some detail. ^[20] The phylogenetic tree shown below is from Wurdack and Davis (2009). The statistical support for each branch is 100% bootstrap percentage and 100% posterior probability, except where labeled, with bootstrap percentage followed by posterior probability.

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Malpighiales

External links

• Malpighiales At: Angiosperm Phylogeny Website At: Missouri Botanical Garden Website
• Malpighiales Phylogeny doi:10.3732/ajb.0800207
• Genera Plantarum by Jussieu
• APG II
• Samydaceae At: The Tree of Life