Morphological phylogenetics of Bignoniaceae Juss.

Abstract

The most recent classification of Bignoniaceae recognized seven tribes, Phylogenetic and monographic studies focusing on clades within Bignoniaceae had revised tribal and generic boundaries and species numbers for several groups, the portions of the family that remain most poorly known are the African and Asian groups. The goal of the present study is to identify the primary lineages of Bignoniaceae in Egypt based on macromorphological traits. A total of 25 species of Bignoniaceae in Egypt was included in this study (Table 1), along with Barleria cristata as outgroup. Parsimony analyses were conducted using the program NONA 1.6, preparation of data set matrices and phylogenetic tree editing were achieved in WinClada Software. The obtained cladogram showed that within the studied taxa of Bignoniaceae there was support for eight lineages. The present study revealed that the two studied species of Tabebuia showed a strong support for monophyly as well as Tecoma and Kigelia. It was revealed that Bignonia, Markhamia and Parmentiera are not monophyletic genera.