Minutes of Pullman Workshop on Angiosperm Phylogeny
May 2-3, 1999
Washington State University
Pullman, WA

The participants of three symposia on angiosperm phylogeny scheduled for the 1999 International Botanical Congress gathered for a workshop at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, on May 2-3, 1999, organized and hosted by Pam and Doug Soltis. A full-day (9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m) public symposium was held on May 2, in which each participant presented a preview of his/her talk for IBC. A GPPRCG Business Meeting, chaired by Brent Mishler, was held on May 3rd.

Angiosperm Phylogeny Symposium

New morphological evidence of basal angiosperm relationships and its relevance to recent molecular studies

James A. Doyle, University of California, Davis

Fossil magnoliids from the Early Cretaceous Santana flora, Gondwana

Barbara Mohr, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin

Floral ontogeny in the Nymphaeales: Reduction, amplification, and convergence

Edward L. Schneider, Santa Barbara Botanic Barden

Pollen diversity in some modern magnoliids

Bruce Sampson, Victoria University, Wellington, NZ

Gynoecium structure in the magnoliids: Phylogenetic and evolutionary implications

Peter K. Endress, University of Zurich

New perspectives in the reproductive biology of angiosperms

Leonard B. Thien, Tulane University

Early events in the angiosperm radiation: Evidence from two phytochrome gene pairs

Sarah Mathews, Harvard University

Evolution of endosperm developmental patterns among basal flowering plants

Sandy Floyd, University of Colorado

A phylogeny of basal angiosperms inferred from 17 chloroplast genes

Sean Graham, University of Alberta

Basal lineages of angiosperms: Evidence from multiple genes

Pamela S. Soltis, Washington State University

Lineage effects and rates of molecular evolution among seed plants

Michael J. Sanderson, University of California, Davis

Angiosperm phylogeny: Congruent patterns from multiple genes

Douglas E. Soltis, Washington State University

Phylogenetic relationships and character evolution in the monocotyledons

Jerrold I. Davis, Cornell University

Molecular phylogeny and character evolution in the basal eudicots

Sara B. Hoot, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Ordinal delimitation and relationships of rosid families: Evolution of molecular and anatomical characters

Mark W. Chase, Royal Botanic Garden, Kew

Altered life histories and morphologies: Molecular perspectives on Caryophyllales s.l.

M. Dolores Lledo, Oxford University

Phylogenetic classification of flowering plants

Kare Bremer, Uppsala University

Molecular phylogeny of Magnoliaceae inferred from ndhF sequences

Youngbae Suh, Seoul National University

GPPRCG Business Meeting

The meeting convened at 9:00 a.m. May 3rd, in the Compton Union Building, Rm. 11, on the Washington State University campus; Brent Mishler presided.

Brent thanked the speakers for their talks and the Soltises for organizing the meeting. He then provided a brief history of the GPPRCG and an overview of GPPRCG funding for participants in the its 8 symposia at the International Botanical Congress. An allocation of $1000 per talk, for each of 7 talks in each of 8 symposia, amounts to $56,000; this money will be available to speakers on a reimbursement basis. In addition, the GPPRCG has made 23 student travel awards--19 $500 awards and 4 $100 awards (to cover registration). A small amount of funds have been retained to support the website.

At the IBC, the GPPRCG will hold a breakfast and business meeting on Thursday morning, August 5. Topics to be discusssed are the permanent structure of the group after grant is over, future funding, etc. The temporary Executive Committee is composed of Brent Mishler (Chair), Mark Buchheim, Russ Chapman, Liz Zimmer, Chuck Delwiche, and Pam Soltis.

Discussion continued about shared storage and culture collections, funding opportunities for these facilities, funding for collaborations, and government vs. private funding.

Regarding publication of IBC proceedings, there is no plan at GPPRCG level to publish symposia per se; each group can take care of it itself; some groups do not want to publish their proceedings because of recent publications. However, the GPPRCG is providing a book, shortly after IBC. Editors are Brent, Jim Doyle, and Rick McCourt. The book will be divided into two parts: the first part (14 chapters) will contain trees of the major clades; the second part will address issues. Only published data will be used and discussed in the book. All contributions to the IBC (and resulting should acknowledg the GPPRCG grant.

1. coordination within symposia and among symposia
   • revise talks?
   • rearrange order? (no problem with IBC)
   • how to coordinate across talks?
   • some talks might need more phylogenetic context.
   • seed plants need better coverage.
   • integration of different types of data
2. updating of data availability matrices
   • Soltises will coordinate molecular data for angiosperms on DAMs;
   • Brent will ask Paul Kenrick to take up Peter Crane's role for seed plants.
3. terminology; examples of words that are often misused or misinterpreted:
   • "basal"
   • "pectinate"
   • "early-diverging"
   • "eumagnoliids"
4. Data analysis
   • fewer OTUs vs. fewer characters?
   • construction of data sets--fossils and morphology
   • missing data--loss of support but not necessarily a change in topology
   • loss of expertise in critical analyses of morphology, concern for next generation
   • shallow vs. deep levels: how to proceed?
       global analyses?--exemplars?--compartments?--supertrees?--local?