Abstract

Summary Phylogenetic analysis of actinorhizal plant families is now possible due to the availability of numerous angiosperm sequences of the plastid gene rbcL. A sampling of a 100 rbcL sequences, including representatives of all eight actinorhizal families, was conducted to estimate their phylogenetic relationships. The phylogeny was estimated by neighbor-joining analysis of a matrix of pairwise substitution rates. Bootstrap and double-bootstrap values were estimated. In order to assess the divergent hypotheses of unique or recurrent evolution of actinorhizal symbiosis, character state changes were traced along the branches of the phylogenetic consensus trees obtained, and the number of character changes for each of the two scenarios was calculated. The most parsimonious scenario favored the recurrent evolution of actinorhizal symbiosis. This scenario is supported by the morphophysiological diversity of actinorhizal symbioses and by the relaxed coevolutionary relationships between the host plants and the ...

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