Alismatales (Alismatids)

Aim: Phylogenomics Stage 2
Project initiation: Aug 2021
Project lead:  Michelle Waycott | University of Adelaide and State Herbarium of South Australia

Project description:

The Alismatids are a monocot group with possibly the greatest adaptive radiation of freshwater plants on Earth. Worldwide the order is a group that contains a rich diversity of floral and vegetative habits, pollination systems including most of the water-pollinated flowering plant species, and seagrasses.

In Australia there are around 136 species of Alismatales in 8 families and 38 genera. The taxonomy requires updating and preliminary works have difficulty in resolving some species and genus groups. The current Flora of Australia treatment (Volume 39; 2011) does not include many of the emerging Family-genus-species concepts that molecular data sets enable us to generate.

For this study we will sample most currently recognised Australian species, which would lead to a greater clarity on the diversity of this early diverging lineage of the monocotyledons.