Premium
INCONGRUENCE BETWEEN GAMETOPHYTIC AND SPOROPHYTIC CLASSIFICATIONS IN MOSSES
Author(s) -
Rohrer Joseph R.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
taxon
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.819
H-Index - 81
eISSN - 1996-8175
pISSN - 0040-0262
DOI - 10.2307/1222089
Subject(s) - sporophyte , gametophyte , biology , bryophyte , similarity (geometry) , range (aeronautics) , evolutionary biology , botany , artificial intelligence , computer science , pollen , materials science , composite material , image (mathematics)
Summary Bryophyte systematists have long believed that because both the gametophytic and sporophytic generations are well developed and diverse, the classification of mosses presents difficulties not found in other plants. Often classifications based on the sporophyte are quite different from those based on the gametophyte. Following methods developed by Rohlf, the product–moment correlation between two matrices of similarity values was used as a numerical measure of congruence, and a randomization test was applied to assess its significance. The degree of incongruence between phenetic similarity matrices based independently on gametophytic and sporophytic characters was measured for three published data sets. The similarity matrix correlation coefficients range from 0.07 to 0.21, all indicating a high degree of incongruence. This incongruence is as great as or greater than that reported for classifications based on different life stages or body parts in other groups of plants and animals. For two of the three data sets studied, classifications based independently on gametophytic and sporophytic characters are significantly less congruent than classifications based on randomized subsets of the characters. The differences in phenetic relationships as expressed by the gametophytic and sporophytic generations thus appear to be real rather than being simply an artifact of splitting a homogeneous set of characters into two subsets.