Phylogeny

There has been a decrease in the ability of biologists to identify their material correctly, particu- larly plants of complicated genera with common agamospermy, where old clonal entities are accorded the rank of species (microspecies). Agamospermous microspecies are taxonomic enti- ties recognizable from one another by a set of minute morphological features. The knowledge of microspecies is confined to a few specialists. Specialists usemicrospecies names but there could be inconsistencies in the taxonomic concepts used by different, geographically remote experts.

R is nowadays probably the most powerful tool for statistics of all types. There are plenty of modules available for work with molecular data. Those will be introduced during the course. Previous knowledge of R is useful, but not necessary. If there is at least one participant not speaking Czech, the course will be in English.

Phylogenetics benefits from using a large number of putatively independent nuclear loci and their combination with other sources of information, such as the plastid and mitochondrial genomes. To facilitate the selection of orthologous low-copy nuclear (LCN) loci for phylogenetics in non-model organisms, we created an automated and interactive script to select hundreds of LCN loci by a comparison between transcriptome and genome skim data. We used our script to obtain LCN genes for southern African Oxalis (Oxalidaceae), a speciose plant lineage in the Greater Cape Floristic Region.

The coexistence of agamospermy and sexuality characterizes most of the ~60 sections of the genus Taraxacum. Section Dioszegia, comprising T. serotinum and its allies, are an exception because only sexuals are reported for all the members of this group.

Since academic year 2015/16 is the course scheduled in SIS as MB120C16.