TAXON 65 (6) • December 2016: 1263–1287 Peterson & al. • Phylogeny and classification of the Cynodonteae A molecular phylogeny and classification of the Cynodonteae (Poaceae: Chloridoideae) with four new genera: Orthacanthus, Triplasiella, Tripogonella, and Zaqiqah; three new subtribes: Dactylocteniinae, Orininae, and Zaqiqahinae; and a subgeneric classification of Distichlis Paul M. Peterson,1 Konstantin Romaschenko,1,2 & Yolanda Herrera Arrieta3 1 Smithsonian Institution, Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012, U.S.A. 2 M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany, National Academy of Sciences, Kiev 01601, Ukraine 3 Instituto Politécnico Nacional, CIIDIR Unidad Durango-COFAA, Durango, C.P. 34220, Mexico Author for correspondence: Paul M. Peterson,
[email protected] ORCID PMP, http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9405-5528; KR, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7248-4193 DOI https://doi.org/10.12705/656.4 Abstract Morphologically, the tribe Cynodonteae is a diverse group of grasses containing about 839 species in 96 genera and 18 subtribes, found primarily in Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Because the classification of these genera and spe cies has been poorly understood, we conducted a phylogenetic analysis on 213 species (389 samples) in the Cynodonteae using sequence data from seven plastid regions (rps16-trnK spacer, rps16 intron, rpoC2, rpl32-trnL spacer, ndhF, ndhA intron, ccsA) and the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer regions (ITS 1 & 2) to infer evolutionary relationships and refine the