Phylogenetic analysis of ITS has been useful in identifying the major lineages in the group, and unraveling many inconsistencies in the sectional classification. However, most recent groups in the eastern Mediterranean clade are not resolved and reticulation in the western Mediterranean group of sections makes phylogenetic relationships within these two groups somewhat obscure.

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SummaryTragopogon includes two classic examples of recently formed allopolyploid species in North America: T. mirus and T. miscellus. Older Tragopogon allotetraploids from Eurasia offer ideal taxa for comparing the longer term outcomes of allopolyploidy.To help resolve the ancestry of one of these older polyploids, phylogenetic analyses of multiple populations of the allotetraploid T. castellanus (2n = 24) and its putative diploid parents, T. crocifolius and T. lamottei, were conducted using sequences from nuclear (internal transcribed spacer, ITS; and alcohol dehydrogenase 1A, Adh) and plastid (trnT-trnL spacer, trnL intron, trnL-trnF spacer and rpl16 intron) loci. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and genomic in situ hybridization (GISH) were used to investigate the chromosomal constitution of T. castellanus.Our data confirm that the widely distributed T. crocifolius and the Iberian endemic, T. lamottei, are the diploid parents of T. castellanus, and that this polyploid formed at least three times.One group of populations of T. castellanus is distinct in exhibiting two pairs of rearranged chromosomes. These data suggest that some of the chromosomal variants that originate in young polyploids (here, an intergenomic translocation) may become fixed in populations, contributing to novelty in older polyploid lineages. The geographical distributions of the allopolyploids and parents are also complex, with allotetraploid populations being disjunct from one or both of the most closely related diploid parental populations.

Bonamia ostreae is a protozoan parasite that infects the European flat oyster Ostrea edulis, causing systemic infections and resulting in massive mortalities in populations of this valuable bivalve species. In this work, we have characterized B. ostreae actin genes and used their sequences for a phylogenetic analysis. Design of different primer sets was necessary to amplify the central coding region of actin genes of B. ostreae. Characterization of the sequences and their amplification in different samples demonstrated the presence of 2 intragenomic actin genes in B. ostreae, without any intron. The phylogenetic analysis placed B. ostreae in a clade with Minchinia tapetis, Minchinia teredinis and Haplosporidium costale as its closest relatives, and demonstrated that the paralogous actin genes found in Bonamia resulted from a duplication of the original actin gene after the Bonamia origin.