2005 Volume 56 Issue 2 Pages 111-126
Pteridophytes are free-sporing vascular land plants that evolutionarily link bryophytes and seed plants. Conventional, group (taxon)-based hierarchic classifications of pteridophytes using phenetic characters are briefly reviewed. Review is also made for recent tree-based cladistic analyses and molecular phylogenetic analyses with increasingly large data sets of multiple genes (compared to single genes in previous studies) and increasingly large numbers of species representing major groups of pteridophytes (compared to particular groups in previous studies), and it is extended to most recent analyses of estimating divergence times of pteridophytes. These classifications, phylogenetics, and divergence time estimates have improved our understanding of the diversity and historical structure of pteridophytes. Heterospory is noted with reference to its origins, endospory, fertilization, and dispersal. Finally, monophyletic and paraphyletic groups recently proposed or re-recognized are briefly described.
