Carolina Granados Mendoza

Instituto de Biología, UNAM · Departamento de Botánica

The economically important cotton and cacao family (Malvaceae sensu lato) have long been recognized as a monophyletic group. However, the relationships among some subfamilies are still unclear as discordant phylogenetic hypotheses keep arising when different sources of molecular data are analyzed. Phylogenetic discordance has previously been hypoth...

Background and aims – A linear morphometric analysis of three taxa of the Tillandsia erubescens complex, composed of T. erubescens var. arroyoensis , T. erubescens var. erubescens , and T. erubescens var. patentibracteata , is presented to evaluate their circumscription. Additionally, their taxonomic rank as varieties or species is discussed consid...

The family Malvaceae s. l. is a clade that comprises nine subfamilies. Phylogenetic relationships among them are not completely resolved and are inconsistent among studies, probably due to low phylogenetic informativeness of conventional molecular markers. In the present study, we provide new phylogenetic information for Malvaceae s. l. derived fro...

Background: Mentzelia (Loasaceae) is primarily distributed in western North America. The genus is classified into six monophyletic sections, among which species of section Bartonia are particularly poorly understood. Questions: What species of Mentzelia section Bartonia occur in Mexico? What are the species distribution ranges and what are their d...

Background: Mentzelia (Loasaceae) is a genus of approximately 95 species that are largely distributed in western North America; however, much ambiguity remains regarding species in Mexico. Questions: What species of Mentzelia occur in Mexico and how can they be distinguished? Study species: Mentzelia Methods: Fieldwork, herbarium studies and sca...

Background: Hydrangea section Cornidia consists of 26 currently accepted species and a yet undefined number of new species and erroneously synonymized taxa. This clade consists of (sub)tropical lianas occurring from northern Mexico to southern Chile and Argentina, and one species from Southeast Asia. Currently, no molecular phylogenetic hypothesis...

Hydrangea section Cornidia, currently consisting of 19 accepted taxa, occurs from Mexico to Chile and Argentina, with one species in southeast Asia. Its representatives are root-climbing lianas which may grow up to 60 m high in the tree canopy of temperate to (sub)tropical forests. Our extensive field work throughout its distribution area, study of...

The process of hybridization occurs in approximately 40% of vascular plants, and this exchange of genetic material between non-conspecific individuals occurs unequally among plant lineages, being more frequent in certain groups such as Opuntia (Cactaceae). This genus is known for multiple taxonomic controversies due to widespread polyploidy and pro...

A new saxicolous species from the steep cliffs of the Copalita river canyon is described and illustrated: Tillandsia joel-mandimboensis. We present detailed morphological comparisons of the new species to other morphologically-related saxicolous Tillandsia species also endemic to river canyon cliffs, complemented with information on their habitat p...

Universal angiosperm enrichment probe sets designed to enrich hundreds of putatively orthologous nuclear single-copy loci are increasingly being applied to infer phylogenetic relationships of different lineages of angiosperms at a range of evolutionary depths. Studies applying such probe sets have focused on testing the universality and performance...

Background The polyamine oxidases (PAOs) catabolize the oxidative deamination of the polyamines (PAs) spermine (Spm) and spermidine (Spd). Most of the phylogenetic studies performed to analyze the plant PAO family took into account only a limited number and/or taxonomic representation of plant PAOs sequences. Results Here, we constructed a plant P...

Resumen de conferencia

Salvia subg. Calosphace (Lamiaceae, Lamiales) is a highly diverse clade endemic to the New World. The phylogenetic relationships of Calosphace have been previously investigated using DNA sequences of nuclear ITS region and plastid psbA–trnH intergenic spacer, but the resulting trees lack resolution and support for many clades. The present paper rea...

Recalcitrant relationships are characterized by very short internodes that can be found among shallow and deep phylogenetic scales all over the tree of life. Adding large amounts of presumably informative sequences, while decreasing systematic error, has been suggested as a possible approach to increase phylogenetic resolution. The development of e...

The Neotropical genus Tillandsia (Bromeliaceae) is an excellent model system for macroevolutionary and biogeographic studies due to its remarkable species diversity (ca. 650 spp.) and varied morphological and ecological adaptations to epiphytic and saxicolous habitats. Recent phylogenetic studies have greatly improved our knowledge about generic li...

We conducted a pilot study using Anchored Hybrid Enrichment to resolve relationships among a mostly Neotropical sage lineage that may have undergone a recent evolutionary radiation. Conventional markers (ITS, trnL-trnF and trnH-psbA) have not been able to resolve the relationships among species nor within portions of the backbone of the lineage. We...

The Tillandsia erubescens group (Bromeliaceae) encompasses seven currently recognized species with reduced, pendulous inflorescences and endemic to pine-oak forests in the high mountains of Mexico. During the course of a taxonomic revision based on extensive study of herbarium specimens and detailed observations in the field, a new species of this...

Tribe Hydrangeeae of Hydrangeaceae currently contains nine morphologically diverse genera, many of which are wellknown garden ornamentals. Previous studies have shown eight of these genera to be phylogenetically nested within Hydrangea, rendering the latter polyphyletic. To clarify the phylogeny of tribe Hydrangeeae, the present study sequenced fou...

Identifying orthologous molecular markers that potentially resolve relationships at and below species level has been a major challenge in molecular phylogenetics over the past decade. Non-coding regions of nuclear low- or single-copy markers are a vast and promising source of data providing information for shallow-scale phylogenetics. Taking advant...

In the Neotropics, the genus Hydrangea of the popular ornamental hortensia family is represented by climbing species that strongly cling to their support surface by means of adhesive roots closely positioned along specialized anchoring stems. These root-climbing hortensia species belong to the nearly exclusive American Hydrangea section Cornidia an...

Hydrangea s. l., belonging to the up-market segment of ornamental cultivars, currently faces a renaissance in horticulture. Hence, novel molecular assisted breeding approaches are timely. Wide hybridization, i.e. crosses between distantly related species, has been shown to be problematic. Recent studies have considerably improved our knowledge of t...

As traditionally recognized, the tribe Hydrangeeae (Hydrangea s.l.) of the Cornales family Hydrangeaceae includes the warm temperate and tropical genera Hydrangea s.s. plus Broussaisia, Cardiandra, Decumaria, Deinanthe, Dichroa, Pileostegia, Platycrater and Schizophragma. A number of species of this tribe are popular woody ornamentals for their con...

In the present work, a revision of the Systematics of Tillandsia macdougallii (Bromeliaceae), a species group endemic to Mexico with economic and cultural importance, is presented. In order to evaluate the monophyly of the complex and to explore the phylogenetic relationships of its species a cladistic analyses was carried out of DNA sequences of t...