Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Applications in Plant Sciences
Volume
6
Issue
5
Publisher
Botanical Society of America
Publication Date
5-17-2018
First Page
1
Last Page
8
Abstract
Premise of the Study
Until recently, most phylogenetic studies of ferns were based on chloroplast genes. Evolutionary inferences based on these data can be incomplete because the characters are from a single linkage group and are uniparentally inherited. These limitations are particularly acute in studies of hybridization, which is prevalent in ferns; fern hybrids are common and ferns are able to hybridize across highly diverged lineages, up to 60 million years since divergence in one documented case. However, it not yet clear what effect such hybridization has on fern evolution, in part due to a paucity of available biparentally inherited (nuclear‐encoded) markers.
Methods
We designed oligonucleotide baits to capture 25 targeted, low‐copy nuclear markers from a sample of 24 species spanning extant fern diversity.
Results
Most loci were successfully sequenced from most accessions. Although the baits were designed from exon (transcript) data, we successfully captured intron sequences that should be useful for more focused phylogenetic studies. We present phylogenetic analyses of the new target sequence capture data and integrate these into a previous transcript‐based data set.
Discussion
We make our bait sequences available to the community as a resource for further studies of fern phylogeny.
Recommended Citation
Wolf, P. G., T. A. Robison, M. G. Johnson, M. A. Sundue, W. L. Testo, and C. J. Rothfels. 2018. Target sequence capture of nuclear‐encoded genes for phylogenetic analysis in ferns. Applications in Plant Sciences 6(5): e1148.
