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Telopea Vol. 6(4): 1996 
Within the Fabaceae, both Daviesia mimosoides and D. buxifolia have been recognised 
by taxonomists for more than a century (Crisp 1991; Crisp 1995a). Whilst D. buxifolia 
has apparent autapomorphies in the crenulate, cordate leaves, D. mimosoides has no 
evident autapomorphy. Recently, on the basis of phenetic analysis. Crisp (1991) 
recognised a montane autapomorphic subspecies (acr/s) within D. mimosoides and 
segregated a metaspecies (D. elliptica) from D. mimosoides and D. buxifolia. All these 
taxa are well-defined clusters in morphometric space. Cladistic analysis of the whole 
D. latifolia group, including these phenetic taxa as terminals (Crisp 1991), shows the 
two subspecies of D. mimosoides to be the unresolved sister-group to a clade comprising 
D. buxifolia and D. elliptica. Thus, D.mimosoides may be paraphyletic with respect to 
D. buxifolia and D. elliptica, D. elliptica may be paraphyletic with respect to D. buxifolia, 
and D. mimosoides subsp. mimosoides may be paraphyletic with respect to subsp. acris. 
Overall, 21% of the species and subspecies examined lack autapomorphies and thus 
may be paraphyletic (Table 4). This reflects the proportion in the Fabaceae but tlie 
proportion of Proteaceae is greater (33%). However, as the Proteaceae sample is small 
(n = 24), not much should be made of this difference. Among genera, the proportion 
ranges from 0% {Embothrium) to 50% lOreocallis) but these extremes may reflect sampling 
error because they are the smallest genera (1 and 2 species respectively). More interesting 
is the difference between species (17%) and subspecies (50%), which a G-statistic test 
(Sokal & Rohlf 1981) shows to be significant (G = 12.268,1 d.f., P < 0.001). This result is 
unsurprising, because at the lower taxonomic level (subspecies), taxa are less likely to be 
fully differentiated, autapomorphic lineages. We have also tabulated a geographic 
Table 4. Summary of metataxa (spedes and subspedes lacking evident autapomorphies) in some 
genera from Proteaceae (tribe Embothrieae) and Fabaceae (tribe Mirbelieae) for which phylogenies 
are available. Tribal subtotals reflect only the genera listed in this table. In the last line of the 
table, 'other" includes central Australia, northern Australia and other parts of the world. For a full 
listing of taxa and their autapomorphies, see Appendix 1. 
Taxon 
Total 
taxa 
With autapomorphies 
(monophyletic) 
No autapomorphy 
(metataxa) 
Metataxa 
(%) 
Proteaceae: Embothrieae 
Alloxylon 
4 
3 
1 
25 
Embothrium 
1 
1 
0 
0 
Lomatia 
12 
8 
4 
33 
Oreocallis 
2 
1 
1 
50 
Telopea 
5 
3 
2 
40 
Subtotal 
24 
16 
8 
33 
Fabaceae: Mirbelieae 
Brachysema 
10 
7 
3 
30 
Chorizema 
27 
25 
2 
7 
Daviesia 
145 
114 
31 
21 
Subtotal 
182 
146 
36 
20 
Total (all taxa) 
206 
162 
44 
21 
Species 
180 
149 
31 
17 
Subspecies 
26 
13 
13 
50 
Eastern Australia 
51 
33 
18 
35 
Western Australia 
143 
120 
23 
16 
Other 
12 
9 
3 
25 
