seed-plants
Seed plants, or spermatophytes, are vascular plants that reproduce through seeds — a defining innovation that enabled successful colonization of diverse terrestrial environments. This group encompasses the vast majority of land plant diversity, including both flowering plants and gymnosperms, making them central to nearly every area of plant science research. Understanding seed plant evolution, physiology, and ecology underpins advances in agriculture, conservation, and our broader knowledge of how complex plant life developed on Earth.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-05-08
Scientists have failed for 40 years to determine how the major groups of seed plants are related to one another. This study argues that 'surviving ancestors' — ancient lineages still alive today — are causing the confusion, and proposes two new diagram types to break the longstanding evolutionary deadlock.
Forty years of phylogenetic analysis have failed to resolve the evolutionary relationships among the five major groups of living seed plants
Surviving ancestors — ancient lineages that gave rise to descendants without going extinct — produce 'hard polytomies' (multiple simultaneous branches) that standard cladogram methods cannot accurately represent
Simulated ancestor experiments confirmed that network visualization tools can detect the signature of surviving ancestors in morphological data matrices, pointing toward a methodological path forward
