BACKGROUND
among the c.  <dig> families of angiosperms  <cit>  are about  <dig> parasitic lineages  <cit>  of which some have completely lost the ability to photosynthesize.
such non-photosynthetic parasites grow embedded within the host tissues  and emerge only during sexual reproduction  <cit> .
molecular-phylogenetic studies in recent years have revealed the sister groups of most parasitic plants [e. g.  <cit> .
only the apodanthaceae and the likewise holoparasitic cynomoriaceae have not yet been placed with confidence, and the apodanthaceae are also the only unplaced family-level clade in the latest classification of flowering plants  <cit> .
before the advent of large-scale molecular sequencing and until about  <dig>  apodanthaceae were considered to belong in the order rafflesiales, together with rafflesiaceae, cytinaceae and mitrastemonaceae  <cit> , mainly based on few or solitary, rather large to very large flowers with a single set of tepals that are commonly united into a conspicuous, corolloid calyx.
the aerial portions of apodanthaceae consist of very short flowering shoots, each with a single flower that bursts out of the host's cortex during development  <cit> .
flowers are less than a centimeter across.
the family contains three genera: the neotropical apodanthes with about five species from panama throughout south america to uruguay and argentina; the disjunctly distributed pilostyles with c. nine species in the southern united states, mexico, panama, venezuela, and brazil, one species in iran and syria, and three in southwestern australia  <cit> ; and the african berlinianche  with one or two species in angola, southern congo, zambia, and zimbabwe, malawi, and tanzania.
both species of "berlinianche" were originally described in pilostyles, and seven of the species of pilostyles and apodanthes have been moved between these genera, suggesting that the generic distinctions are not clear-cut.
apodanthes is supposed to have deciduous perianth segments, while pilostyles has persistent perianth segments.
the three genera also overlap in their host preferences, with apodanthes parasitizing the fabaceae adesmia and the salicaceae casearia and xylosma, and pilostyles and berlinianche parasitizing a range of other fabaceae  <cit> .
two molecular-systematic studies have included apodanthaceae together with representative samples of other flowering plants  <cit> .
both also included the parasites' host species to check for possible horizontal gene transfer between parasite and host.
nickrent et al.
<cit>  sequenced the mitochondrial  gene atp <dig> for apodanthes caseariae, berlinianche aethiopica, and pilostyles thurberi, mt matr for a. caseariae and p. thurberi, and nuclear ribosomal 18s for p. thurberi.
the atp <dig> gene placed the three genera together, but showed pisum  and polemonium  embedded among them, albeit without statistical support.
the matr gene placed apodanthes and pilostyles together  and both as the sister clade to begonia and cucurbita  with a posterior probability of  <dig>  the nuclear 18s region, finally, placed p. thurberi as sister to gossypium and pavonia , albeit again without statistical support.
barkman et al.
<cit>  included only p. thurberi, but sequenced three mt genes, atp <dig>  matr, and cox <dig>  for a data set that covered at least one family from  <dig> of the  <dig> orders of angiosperm.
a maximum likelihood tree from the combined data grouped p. thurberi as sister to begonia and echinocystis , although with low bootstrap support.
the relationship received support from a seemingly uniquely shared  <dig> bp  insertion in the matr genes of p. thurberi, begonia and echinocystis.
both studies  <cit>  explained the contradictory placements of apodanthaceae in the atp <dig>  matr, and 18s gene trees as resulting from horizontal gene transfer .
this is a plausible explanation because plant mitochondrial genes are sometimes exchanged between species  <cit> , and most known cases of hgt come from parasitic plants, which have permanent tissue contact with their hosts  <cit> .
even nuclear dna can be transferred between parasites and their hosts  <cit> .
specifically, nickrent et al.
<cit>  regarded the matr and atp <dig> tree topologies as resulting from hgt.
the only placement accepted as trustworthy was that of p. thurberi near malvales in the 18s tree.
by contrast, barkman et al.
<cit>  suggested that matr was not affected by hgt, but that atp <dig> had recently been transferred from a fabaceae host species to p. thurberi.
barkman et al.
's  <cit>  evidence for this interpretation was twofold.
first, analyses of atp <dig> suggested that four endoparasite lineages, cytinus, mitrastema, pilostyles, and rafflesia, all were closely related to their respective hosts, which appeared extremely unlikely and suggested that atp <dig> might be prone to hgt.
second, when comparing the atp <dig> sequences of two accessions of p. thurberi, one from arizona , one from texas , barkman et al.
noted that the sequences differed at eight sites in the gene's central region.
in contrast, comparisons of atp <dig> from pilostyles-az to atp <dig> from its host revealed identical sequences for  <dig> bp in the central region, but  <dig> differences at the 5' and 3' ends.
based on these and other comparisons, barkman et al.
concluded that pilostyles-az and pilostyles-tx atp <dig> represent chimeric xenologs that result from multiple horizontal gene transfers.
chimeric atp <dig> genes in apodanthaceae were also inferred from the transfer of a 79-nt track of chloroplast  dna to the mitochondria in apodanthes caseariae, but not pilostyles thurberi  <cit> .
the only functional cp sequences so far recovered from any apodanthaceae come from the small subunit of the plastid ribosomal rna 16s gene  <cit> .
these results on chimeric sequences indicate that atp <dig> is unsuited for investigating the phylogenetic relationships of apodanthaceae.
other mitochondrial genes that might be explored for the purpose of phylogenetically placing the apodanthaceae are the mt cox <dig> gene  <cit>  and the nad <dig> b/c exons, e.g.
<cit> .
the cox <dig> gene, however, has an extremely low substitution rate, limiting its usefulness for large-scale phylogenetics  <cit> , and the nad <dig> b/c region is prone to lateral gene transfer  <cit> .
nevertheless, the present study also explored these genes for apodanthaceae phylogenetics.
the most promising genetic markers, however, clearly are the nuclear 18s region and the mt matr gene.
the highly conserved 18s gene codes for rna, a major subunit of the ribosome, and large 18s alignments have been found to contain sufficient signal to recover many known angiosperm family relationships  <cit> .
also, apodanthaceae 18s trees are required to test the surprising apodanthaceae/malvales clade discovered by nickrent et al.
<cit> .
the maturase-related  gene is retained regardless of photosynthetic ability, making it useful for parasite phylogenetics  <cit> .
different from the cox <dig> intron  <cit> , no case of matr loss has come to light  <cit> .
matr sequences are now available for 700+ flowering plants, and the gene's phylogenetic utility in rosids has been shown in a critical study  <cit> .
we therefore generated 18s and matr sequences from multiple accessions and species of apodanthaceae from the united states, chile, iran, and australia.
the sequences were aligned with representatives of all seven families of cucurbitales, an order comprising  <dig> genera with about  <dig> species  <cit> : anisophylleaceae , begoniaceae , coriariaceae , corynocarpaceae , cucurbitaceae , datiscaceae , and tetramelaceae .
following zhu et al.
<cit> , we performed amino acid-level analyses and constructed the dna alignment according to the amino acid alignment.
such codon-based alignments have been shown to result in better statistical support by reducing misalignment of non-homologous regions  <cit> .
as explained above, we also explored the utility of cox <dig> and nad <dig> b/c as potential markers for placing apodanthaceae within angiosperms.
RESULTS
phylogenetics
an alignment of  <dig> cox <dig> exon sequences  that included "berlinianche" aethiopica and pilostyles thurberi sequences from genbank  <cit>  placed the latter on an extremely long branch near viola, linum, and malpighia, albeit without statistical support .
a single apodanthaceae nad <dig> b/c sequence could not be successfully aligned with the 70-taxon nad <dig> b/c data set of won and renner  <cit>  nor with newly generated cucurbitales nad <dig> b/c sequences.
codon substitutions
all apodanthaceae and cucurbitales share three unique codon changes: at positions  <dig>  a c changed to a t, and at positions  <dig> and  <dig>  a g to an a .
two of these changes are non-synonymous, and the change at position  <dig> also results in changing the polarity of the encoded amino acid .
in addition, there is synonymous and variable substitution at position 532; apodanthes caseariae and the australian apodanthaceae  here have a codon cug, while the remaining cucurbitales have cuc.
both codons encode leucine.
american pilostyles species at this position have aug, encoding methionine, while fagales, fabales and rosales have auc, coding for isoleucine.
we also found the codon insertion uniquely shared by cucurbitales and apodanthaceae , previously reported for p. thurberi, begonia, and echinocystis .
australian apodanthaceae and a. caseariae moreover share a 12-nt insertion  at position  <dig>
discussion
phylogenetic placement of the apodanthaceae in the cucurbitales
the mitochondrial and nuclear data analyzed here show that apodanthaceae belong in the cucurbitales, an order here represented by  <dig> or  <dig> species in  <dig> or  <dig> genera from its seven families .
in both trees, all sequences of apodanthaceae form a clade, and all families of cucurbitales are recovered as monophyletic.
the 18s tree moreover recovers the core cucurbit clade of datiscaceae, begoniaceae, tetramelaceae, and cucurbitaceae, the corynocarpaceae and coriariaceae clade, and the placement of anisophylleaceae also found with  <dig>  nucleotides of nuclear, plastid and mitochondrial gene sequences  <cit> .
while not resolving within-cucurbitales family relationships, matr is sufficiently variable to recover angiosperm ordinal relationships that agree with those found with other kinds of data  <cit> .
an example is that cucurbitales are sister to fagales as found by zhang et al.
<cit>  and moore et al.
<cit> .
nickrent et al.
<cit>  were the first to find a relationship between pilostyles and cucurbitales using matr, but distrusted this grouping  because of possible hgt.
our data reject this explanation because apodanthaceae accessions from the different hosts and continents group together, which is implausible under the assumption of hgt.
another argument against hgt affecting our data sets is that the nuclear and mitochondrial trees agree in their placement of apodanthaceae.
it was only when barkman et al.
<cit>  found a codon insertion in the matr gene that was uniquely shared by pilostyles, echinocystis and begonia that a possible phylogenetic relationship among these taxa became a strong hypothesis.
the wider taxon sampling used here confirms the presence of a synapomorphic codon insertion in all cucurbitales  at position  <dig> in nicotiana tabacum nc <dig>  additionally, we found three other codon changes shared by apodanthaceae and cucurbitales, two of them non-synonymous.
this fits with zhu et al.
's  <cit>  finding that the matr non-synonymous substitution rate is relatively high and close to the gene's synonymous substitution rate, indicating relaxed selection.
morphological traits supporting the cucurbitales/apodanthaceae clade and possible relationships with coriariaceae and corynocarpaceae
the cucurbitales are a large order , characterized by ancestrally inferior ovaries and parietal placentation  <cit> , traits than can now be interpreted as a morphological synapomorphy with apodanthaceae, especially since parietal placentation is a rare feature.
other traits characterizing most cucurbitales are unisexual flowers, and a dioecious mating system  <cit> .
apodanthaceae also have strictly unisexual flowers, with dioecy very common  <cit> .
however, unisexual flowers and dioecy are strongly overrepresented among heterotrophic angiosperms  <cit> , cautioning against overconfidence in this trait as evolutionarily conservative.
the 18s tree  shows the apodanthaceae in a polytomy with coriariaceae  and corynocarpaceae , albeit without statistical support.
these families are sister clades  <cit>  and differ from other cucurbitales in having superior ovaries with apical placentation and mostly bisexual flowers .
within cucurbitales, they are therefore morphologically distant from apodanthaceae.
CONCLUSIONS
the fossil record of cucurbitales goes back to the uppermost paleocene and lower eocene london clay  <cit> , indicating the deep evolutionary history of the order.
so far, no cucurbitales are known to be hosts of apodanthaceae, and irrespective of the latter's precise placement in cucurbitales, it is clear that apodanthaceae have been on their own evolutionary trajectory for a very long time.
the family's presence in both, south america and africa, might point to a history going back to a time when some of the fragments of the super-continent gondwana were still close to each other.
however, analysis of the biogeography of apodanthaceae will require inclusion of the two african species, one only known from the type collection destroyed during world war ii.
the genetically and morphologically well-supported inclusion of apodanthaceae in the cucurbitales solves one of the last family-level "problems" in flowering plant phylogenetics  <cit>  and finally allows assessing which genetic material these holoparasites may have acquired from host species.

 among the c. families of angiosperms are about parasitic lineages of which some have completely lost the ability to photosynthesize. such non-photosynthetic parasites grow embedded within the host tissues and emerge only during sexual reproduction. molecular-phylogenetic studies in recent years have revealed the sister groups of most parasitic plants [e. g.. only the apodanthaceae and the likewise holoparasitic cynomoriaceae have not yet been placed with confidence, and the apodanthaceae are also the only unplaced family-level clade in the latest classification of flowering plants. before the advent of large-scale molecular sequencing and until about apodanthaceae were considered to belong in the order rafflesiales, together with rafflesiaceae, cytinaceae and mitrastemonaceae, mainly based on few or solitary, rather large to very large flowers with a single set of tepals that are commonly united into a conspicuous, corolloid calyx. the aerial portions of apodanthaceae consist of very short flowering shoots, each with a single flower that bursts out of the host's cortex during development. flowers are less than a centimeter across. the family contains three genera: the neotropical apodanthes with about five species from panama throughout south america to uruguay and argentina; the disjunctly distributed pilostyles with c. nine species in the southern united states, mexico, panama, venezuela, and brazil, one species in iran and syria, and three in southwestern australia; and the african berlinianche with one or two species in angola, southern congo, zambia, and zimbabwe, malawi, and tanzania. both species of "berlinianche" were originally described in pilostyles, and seven of the species of pilostyles and apodanthes have been moved between these genera, suggesting that the generic distinctions are not clear-cut. apodanthes is supposed to have deciduous perianth segments, while pilostyles has persistent perianth segments. the three genera also overlap in their host preferences, with apodanthes parasitizing the fabaceae adesmia and the salicaceae casearia and xylosma, and pilostyles and berlinianche parasitizing a range of other fabaceae. two molecular-systematic studies have included apodanthaceae together with representative samples of other flowering plants. both also included the parasites' host species to check for possible horizontal gene transfer between parasite and host. nickrent et al. sequenced the mitochondrial gene atp for apodanthes caseariae, berlinianche aethiopica, and pilostyles thurberi, mt matr for a. caseariae and p. thurberi, and nuclear ribosomal 18s for p. thurberi. the atp gene placed the three genera together, but showed pisum and polemonium embedded among them, albeit without statistical support. the matr gene placed apodanthes and pilostyles together and both as the sister clade to begonia and cucurbita with a posterior probability of the nuclear 18s region, finally, placed p. thurberi as sister to gossypium and pavonia, albeit again without statistical support. barkman et al. included only p. thurberi, but sequenced three mt genes, atp matr, and cox for a data set that covered at least one family from of the orders of angiosperm. a maximum likelihood tree from the combined data grouped p. thurberi as sister to begonia and echinocystis, although with low bootstrap support. the relationship received support from a seemingly uniquely shared bp insertion in the matr genes of p. thurberi, begonia and echinocystis. both studies explained the contradictory placements of apodanthaceae in the atp matr, and 18s gene trees as resulting from horizontal gene transfer. this is a plausible explanation because plant mitochondrial genes are sometimes exchanged between species, and most known cases of hgt come from parasitic plants, which have permanent tissue contact with their hosts. even nuclear dna can be transferred between parasites and their hosts. specifically, nickrent et al. regarded the matr and atp tree topologies as resulting from hgt. the only placement accepted as trustworthy was that of p. thurberi near malvales in the 18s tree. by contrast, barkman et al. suggested that matr was not affected by hgt, but that atp had recently been transferred from a fabaceae host species to p. thurberi. barkman et al.'s evidence for this interpretation was twofold. first, analyses of atp suggested that four endoparasite lineages, cytinus, mitrastema, pilostyles, and rafflesia, all were closely related to their respective hosts, which appeared extremely unlikely and suggested that atp might be prone to hgt. second, when comparing the atp sequences of two accessions of p. thurberi, one from arizona, one from texas, barkman et al. noted that the sequences differed at eight sites in the gene's central region. in contrast, comparisons of atp from pilostyles-az to atp from its host revealed identical sequences for bp in the central region, but differences at the 5' and 3' ends. based on these and other comparisons, barkman et al. concluded that pilostyles-az and pilostyles-tx atp represent chimeric xenologs that result from multiple horizontal gene transfers. chimeric atp genes in apodanthaceae were also inferred from the transfer of a 79-nt track of chloroplast dna to the mitochondria in apodanthes caseariae, but not pilostyles thurberi. the only functional cp sequences so far recovered from any apodanthaceae come from the small subunit of the plastid ribosomal rna 16s gene. these results on chimeric sequences indicate that atp is unsuited for investigating the phylogenetic relationships of apodanthaceae. other mitochondrial genes that might be explored for the purpose of phylogenetically placing the apodanthaceae are the mt cox gene and the nad b/c exons, e.g.. the cox gene, however, has an extremely low substitution rate, limiting its usefulness for large-scale phylogenetics, and the nad b/c region is prone to lateral gene transfer. nevertheless, the present study also explored these genes for apodanthaceae phylogenetics. the most promising genetic markers, however, clearly are the nuclear 18s region and the mt matr gene. the highly conserved 18s gene codes for rna, a major subunit of the ribosome, and large 18s alignments have been found to contain sufficient signal to recover many known angiosperm family relationships. also, apodanthaceae 18s trees are required to test the surprising apodanthaceae/malvales clade discovered by nickrent et al.. the maturase-related gene is retained regardless of photosynthetic ability, making it useful for parasite phylogenetics. different from the cox intron, no case of matr loss has come to light. matr sequences are now available for 700+ flowering plants, and the gene's phylogenetic utility in rosids has been shown in a critical study. we therefore generated 18s and matr sequences from multiple accessions and species of apodanthaceae from the united states, chile, iran, and australia. the sequences were aligned with representatives of all seven families of cucurbitales, an order comprising genera with about species: anisophylleaceae, begoniaceae, coriariaceae, corynocarpaceae, cucurbitaceae, datiscaceae, and tetramelaceae. following zhu et al., we performed amino acid-level analyses and constructed the dna alignment according to the amino acid alignment. such codon-based alignments have been shown to result in better statistical support by reducing misalignment of non-homologous regions. as explained above, we also explored the utility of cox and nad b/c as potential markers for placing apodanthaceae within angiosperms.  phylogenetics an alignment of cox exon sequences that included "berlinianche" aethiopica and pilostyles thurberi sequences from genbank placed the latter on an extremely long branch near viola, linum, and malpighia, albeit without statistical support. a single apodanthaceae nad b/c sequence could not be successfully aligned with the 70-taxon nad b/c data set of won and renner nor with newly generated cucurbitales nad b/c sequences. codon substitutions all apodanthaceae and cucurbitales share three unique codon changes: at positions a c changed to a t, and at positions and a g to an a. two of these changes are non-synonymous, and the change at position also results in changing the polarity of the encoded amino acid. in addition, there is synonymous and variable substitution at position 532; apodanthes caseariae and the australian apodanthaceae here have a codon cug, while the remaining cucurbitales have cuc. both codons encode leucine. american pilostyles species at this position have aug, encoding methionine, while fagales, fabales and rosales have auc, coding for isoleucine. we also found the codon insertion uniquely shared by cucurbitales and apodanthaceae, previously reported for p. thurberi, begonia, and echinocystis. australian apodanthaceae and a. caseariae moreover share a 12-nt insertion at position discussion phylogenetic placement of the apodanthaceae in the cucurbitales the mitochondrial and nuclear data analyzed here show that apodanthaceae belong in the cucurbitales, an order here represented by or species in or genera from its seven families. in both trees, all sequences of apodanthaceae form a clade, and all families of cucurbitales are recovered as monophyletic. the 18s tree moreover recovers the core cucurbit clade of datiscaceae, begoniaceae, tetramelaceae, and cucurbitaceae, the corynocarpaceae and coriariaceae clade, and the placement of anisophylleaceae also found with nucleotides of nuclear, plastid and mitochondrial gene sequences. while not resolving within-cucurbitales family relationships, matr is sufficiently variable to recover angiosperm ordinal relationships that agree with those found with other kinds of data. an example is that cucurbitales are sister to fagales as found by zhang et al. and moore et al.. nickrent et al. were the first to find a relationship between pilostyles and cucurbitales using matr, but distrusted this grouping because of possible hgt. our data reject this explanation because apodanthaceae accessions from the different hosts and continents group together, which is implausible under the assumption of hgt. another argument against hgt affecting our data sets is that the nuclear and mitochondrial trees agree in their placement of apodanthaceae. it was only when barkman et al. found a codon insertion in the matr gene that was uniquely shared by pilostyles, echinocystis and begonia that a possible phylogenetic relationship among these taxa became a strong hypothesis. the wider taxon sampling used here confirms the presence of a synapomorphic codon insertion in all cucurbitales at position in nicotiana tabacum nc additionally, we found three other codon changes shared by apodanthaceae and cucurbitales, two of them non-synonymous. this fits with zhu et al.'s finding that the matr non-synonymous substitution rate is relatively high and close to the gene's synonymous substitution rate, indicating relaxed selection. morphological traits supporting the cucurbitales/apodanthaceae clade and possible relationships with coriariaceae and corynocarpaceae the cucurbitales are a large order, characterized by ancestrally inferior ovaries and parietal placentation, traits than can now be interpreted as a morphological synapomorphy with apodanthaceae, especially since parietal placentation is a rare feature. other traits characterizing most cucurbitales are unisexual flowers, and a dioecious mating system. apodanthaceae also have strictly unisexual flowers, with dioecy very common. however, unisexual flowers and dioecy are strongly overrepresented among heterotrophic angiosperms, cautioning against overconfidence in this trait as evolutionarily conservative. the 18s tree shows the apodanthaceae in a polytomy with coriariaceae and corynocarpaceae, albeit without statistical support. these families are sister clades and differ from other cucurbitales in having superior ovaries with apical placentation and mostly bisexual flowers. within cucurbitales, they are therefore morphologically distant from apodanthaceae.  the fossil record of cucurbitales goes back to the uppermost paleocene and lower eocene london clay, indicating the deep evolutionary history of the order. so far, no cucurbitales are known to be hosts of apodanthaceae, and irrespective of the latter's precise placement in cucurbitales, it is clear that apodanthaceae have been on their own evolutionary trajectory for a very long time. the family's presence in both, south america and africa, might point to a history going back to a time when some of the fragments of the super-continent gondwana were still close to each other. however, analysis of the biogeography of apodanthaceae will require inclusion of the two african species, one only known from the type collection destroyed during world war ii. the genetically and morphologically well-supported inclusion of apodanthaceae in the cucurbitales solves one of the last family-level "problems" in flowering plant phylogenetics and finally allows assessing which genetic material these holoparasites may have acquired from host species. 
because of lateral gene transfer between apodanthaceae and their hosts it has been difficult to infer the family's true closest relatives. apodanthaceae and the seven families of the order cucurbitales form a clade with 100% bootstrap support from matr and 56% from s. in addition, the apodanthaceae and cucurbitales matr gene sequences uniquely share two non-synonymous codon changes and one synonymous change, as well as a codon insertion, already found by barkman et al. the occurrence of apodanthaceae in the americas, africa, the near east, and australia, and their adaptation to distantly related host species in the fabaceae and salicaceae suggest a long evolutionary history. apodanthaceae belong in the cucurbitales with which they share inferior ovaries, parietal placentation and a dioecious mating system, traits that are ancestral in cucurbitales and which can now be interpreted as possible synapomorphies of an enlarged order cucurbitales.
 of the c. families of flowering plants, only two are left "unplaced" in the most recent apg classification of angiosperms. one of these is the apodanthaceae, a clade of c. holoparasitic species in two or three genera occurring in north and south america, africa, the near east, and australia. because of lateral gene transfer between apodanthaceae and their hosts it has been difficult to infer the family's true closest relatives.  here we report a phylogenetic analysis of accessions representing six species of apodanthaceae from the united states, chile, iran, and australia, using the mitochondrial matr gene and the nuclear 18s gene. data matrices include matr sequences from up to families in orders of flowering plants and 18s sequences from families representing the orders of rosids. analyses were performed at the nucleotide and at the amino acid level. both gene trees agree with angiosperm phylogenies found in other studies using more genes. apodanthaceae and the seven families of the order cucurbitales form a clade with 100% bootstrap support from matr and 56% from s. in addition, the apodanthaceae and cucurbitales matr gene sequences uniquely share two non-synonymous codon changes and one synonymous change, as well as a codon insertion, already found by barkman et al..  apodanthaceae belong in the cucurbitales with which they share inferior ovaries, parietal placentation and a dioecious mating system, traits that are ancestral in cucurbitales and which can now be interpreted as possible synapomorphies of an enlarged order cucurbitales. the occurrence of apodanthaceae in the americas, africa, the near east, and australia, and their adaptation to distantly related host species in the fabaceae and salicaceae suggest a long evolutionary history. 