Phylogeny of Sarcoscypha species

 

Harrington & Potter (1997) and Harrington (1998) carried out DNA sequence analysis on  14 species of Sarcoscypha. This study confirms the distinction of different species in the genus based on morphological characteristics. The genetic data even coincide with an evanescent morphological feature, the ascospore envelope, which is present in N-American but absent in European S. coccinea, supporting a possible differentiation into two taxa. It must be mentioned that S. javensis clustered among the three species around S. occidentalis in the tree of Harrington & Potter (1997) while it came out at the very base in the tree of Harrington (1998). Harrington & Potter (1997: 265) concluded from their tree that the genus might have an Asian origin. It must be considered, however, that none of the species known from Madagaskar were available for molecular investigation.

 

Phylogenetic tree of sequenced species of Sarcoscypha based on ITS sequence data (Harrington 1998)

 

    ┌────── vassiljevae

       ┌──────knixoniana

 ┌┤┌┤┌────── humberiana

 │└┤└┼───── austriaca

       │┌──── macaronesica

       └┤┌──── coccinea

          └┴──── aff. coccinea

       ┌──────korfiana

    │┌┤┌──── occidentalis

    └┤└┴──── mesocyatha

             ┌─── dudleyi

       │┌─┴─── jurana

       └┴───── hosoyae

 └──── javensis

E Russia

Japan

Taiwan

colline to boreal Europe & N-America

Macaronesia,

atlantic (& mediterranean) Europe

oceanic N-America

NE China

continental & atlantic N-America

Hawaii

N-atlantic N-America

montaneous Europe

Japan

cosmopolitan in tropics & subtropics

 

 HOME