Dated phylogeny of the Solanaceae published

Tiina Sarkinen and colleagues Lynn Bohs, Dick Olmstead and Sandy Knapp have published a species-rich phylogenetic tree of the nightshade family - with more than 1000 species included, this is the biggest Solanaceae phylogeny yet! They used fossils and molecular methods to put dates on lineages in the family - many of the main lineages date from about 25 million years ago. The tree and these well-calibrated dates will allow us to look at evolution of key characters in the family in a robust framework - a real first. The figures from the paper are also available on the Sol Genomics Network website and downloadable from the paper itself.

Särkinen, T., R.G. Olmstead, L. Bohs & S. Knapp. 2013. A phylogenetic framework for evolutionary study of the nightshades (Solanaceae): a dated 1000-tip tree. BMC Evolutionary Biology 13: 212. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-13-214