Leptolobieae is a

Neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

, early-branching

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

of the

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

subfamily

Faboideae The Faboideae are a subfamily of the flowering plant family Fabaceae or Leguminosae. An acceptable alternative name for the subfamily is Papilionoideae, or Papilionaceae when this group of plants is treated as a family. This subfamily is wide ...

or Papilionaceae that are mostly found in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

Description

This tribe is composed of five genera, two of which were originally included in the genus ''

Acosmium ''Acosmium'' is a South America genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. Three species are currently recognized. Most ''Acosmium'' species have been recently transferred to ''Leptolobium'' and one species to the South American ''Guianode ...

'' ('' Guianodendron'' and '' Leptolobium'') and one of which was originally assigned to the genus '' Diplotropis'' ('' Staminodianthus''). All of these genera were traditionally included in the tribe

Sophoreae The tribe Sophoreae is one of the subdivisions of the plant family Fabaceae. Traditionally this tribe has been used as a wastebasket taxon to accommodate genera of Faboideae which exhibit actinomorphic, rather than zygomorphic floral symmetry and ...

. However, recent

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

analyses resolved these five genera into a strongly-supported monophyletic clade, which warranted the

reinstatement In internal medicine, relapse or recidivism is a recurrence of a past (typically medical) condition. For example, multiple sclerosis and malaria often exhibit peaks of activity and sometimes very long periods of dormancy, followed by relapse or r ...

of the tribe Leptolobieae. A potential morphological

synapomorphy In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to have ...

for the tribe is: "tufts of minute colleter-like glands in the axils of bract and bracteoles".

References

Leptolobieae Leptolobieae is a Neotropical, early-branching monophyletic clade of the flowering plant subfamily Faboideae or Papilionaceae that are mostly found in South America. Description This tribe is composed of five genera, two of which were originally ...

Fabaceae tribes {{Faboideae-stub