Inferring the Australian Angiosperm Tree of Life: paralogy, phylogenetics, and technical hiccups along the way.

Alexander Schmidt-Lebuhn (CSIRO); Ziad Al Bkhetan (Australian BioCommons); Theodore Allnutt (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria); Matt Barrett (James Cook University); Jason Bragg (Royal Botanic Garden Sydney); Gareth Holmes (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria); Chris Jackson (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria); Mabel Lum (Bioplatforms Australia); Steven Manos (Australian BioCommons); Todd McLay (CSIRO); Daniel Murphy (Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria); Katharina Nargar (CSIRO); Lars Nauheimer (James Cook University); Harvey Orel (University of Melbourne); Hervé Sauquet (Royal Botanic Garden Sydney); Kelly Shepherd (Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions); Lalita Simpson (James Cook University); Michelle Waycott (The University of Adelaide); Trevor Wilson (Royal Botanic Garden Sydney); Darren Crayn (James Cook University).

The Phylogenomics activity area of the Genomics for Australian Plants consortium aims to assemble the Australian Angiosperm Tree of Life (AAToL). In its stage 1, Australian native flowering plants were sampled at one specimen per genus by a collaboration of six teams, each centred on a major herbarium, and additional sequences were obtained from mutual data exchange with the Plant and Fungal Tree of Life consortium. After several iterative rounds of analysis, our ‘big tree’ comprising 2,006 terminals has now been inferred, and we are preparing its publication. In this talk, we will present the methodology used in this project with a focus on the resolution of paralogy, phylogenetics, and aspects of quality control. We will also discuss technical problems encountered during analysis and how we explored solutions that may be relevant to other large phylogenomic datasets.