METHODOLOGY ARTICLE Establishment of Anthocer b

icc ition one or more groups of charophyte algae as the sister hornworts branch as successive sister groups such that Szövényi et al. BMC Plant Biology (2015) 15:98 DOI 10.1186/s12870-015-0481-xest study identified hornworts as either sister to all landUK Full list of author information is available at the end of the articlegroup to land plants and reveal two distinct groups of land plants: the bryophytes and the monophyletic group of vas-cular plants [3]. The bryophytes comprise three monophy-letic lineages, the liverworts, the mosses and the hornworts. Although subject to much scrutiny, the phylogenetic hornworts are the sister to vascular plants. However, more recent analyses based on protein sequences suggested that the position of hornworts as vascular plant sister group is an artefact of convergent codon usage in the two lineages [8]. Moreover, the data supported monophyly of liverworts and mosses, a relationship that is further validated by phy-lotranscriptomic analyses of a much larger taxon group [9]. Depending on the phylogenetic method used, this lat-* Correspondence