Molecular genetic surveys of Cotyledon & Crassulaceae

[amanzed]

In researching my little green-bean Cotyledon sp.,

Cotyledon ID help? green-bean leaves, orangish-red bell-form flowers

I found this paper containing a nice table of the five Cotyledon orbiculata varieties recognized at that time:

http://www.amjbot.org/content/vol92/...-07-08-f01.gif

Mort, Mark E., Levsen, Nicholas, Randle, Christopher P., Van Jaarsveld, Ernst, Palmer, Annie
Phylogenetics and diversification of Cotyledon (Crassulaceae) inferred from nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequence data
Am. J. Bot. 2005 92: 1170-1176

And citing Mort et al. 2005, Google Scholar took me to this very, very interesting-looking paper (Gontcharova, Gontcharov 2009), which I am now dying to read:

S. B. Gontcharova and A. A. Gontcharov
Molecular phylogeny and systematics of flowering plants of the family Crassulaceae DC
Molecular Biology, Volume 43, Number 5, 794-803, DOI: 10.1134/S0026893309050112
Original Russian Text published in Molekulyarnaya Biologiya, 2009, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 856–865.

Any Xeric World folks fluent in academese taken a look at this? Lend me a copy? Pretty please? ;-)

Utterly fascinating. They seem to call for a serious reorganization of Cotyledon (Mort et al. 2005) and all of Crassulaceae (Gontcharova, Gontcharov 2009). I guess this is commonplace now throughout the tree of life as genetic data pours in to revise the divisions by form and location. But still amazing to me to see this science occuring before our very eyes -- even with the chaos that causes.

Life is chaotic.

--dean
sentientmeat.net

[Boo Hollow]

Dean - USC or UCLA should have these journals and you should have access, being an alum and all. JSTOR is another online source, albeit and expensive one, for downloads.

[amanzed]

Ah! yes, of course. My thoughts exactly. In fact, they might even have it at Occidental College, where my husband teaches.

This time I was just fishing for a way to avoid a trip to the library. I love libraries, but time flows differently there. I enter, and after a few minutes inside, I exit again.

Meanwhile on the outside, whole days have passed. My plants are dry, my dogs no longer recognize me, and one of my fish has died.

--dean

[amanzed]

To follow up, Gontcharova and Gontcharov (2009) is now available for free download. (Maybe they held it back for only a year after English publication.)

Unfortunately it seems to be a survey of recent work (apropos of this thread, it refers to Mort et al.) It didn't have groundbreaking new genetic surveys. It calls for new family trees for CRASSULACEAE, but does not propose them. Still, it's a nice starting place to study the state of the picture from work during the last 10 years.