• Premise of the study: Recent analyses employing up to five genes have provided numerous insights into angiosperm phylogeny, but many relationships have remained unresolved or poorly supported. In the hope of improving our understanding of angiosperm phylogeny, we expanded sampling of taxa and genes beyond previous analyses.• Methods: We conducted two primary analyses based on 640 species representing 330 families. The first included 25260 aligned base pairs (bp) from 17 genes (representing all three plant genomes, i.e., nucleus, plastid, and mitochondrion). The second included 19846 aligned bp from 13 genes (representing only the nucleus and plastid).• Key results: Many important questions of deep‐level relationships in the nonmonocot angiosperms have now been resolved with strong support. Amborellaceae, Nymphaeales, and Austrobaileyales are successive sisters to the remaining angiosperms (Mesangiospermae), which are resolved into Chloranthales + Magnoliidae as sister to Monocotyledoneae + [Ceratophyllaceae + Eudicotyledoneae]. Eudicotyledoneae contains a basal grade subtending Gunneridae. Within Gunneridae, Gunnerales are sister to the remainder (Pentapetalae), which comprises (1) Superrosidae, consisting of Rosidae (including Vitaceae) and Saxifragales; and (2) Superasteridae, comprising Berberidopsidales, Santalales, Caryophyllales, Asteridae, and, based on this study, Dilleniaceae (although other recent analyses disagree with this placement). Within the major subclades of Pentapetalae, most deep‐level relationships are resolved with strong support.• Conclusions: Our analyses confirm that with large amounts of sequence data, most deep‐level relationships within the angiosperms can be resolved. We anticipate that this well‐resolved angiosperm tree will be of broad utility for many areas of biology, including physiology, ecology, paleobiology, and genomics.

New information technologies have enabled the scientific collections community and its stakeholders to adapt, adopt, and leverage novel approaches for a nearly 300 years old scientific discipline. Now, few can credibly question the transformational impact of technology on efforts to digitize scientific collections, as IT now reaches into almost every nook and cranny of society. Five to ten years ago this was not the case. Digitization is an activity that museums and academic institutions increasingly recognize, though many still do not embrace, as a means to boost the impact of collections to research and society through improved access. The acquisition and use of scientific collections is a global endeavor, and digitization enhances their value by improved access to core biodiversity information, increases use, relevance and potential downstream value, for example, in the management of natural resources, policy development, food security, and planetary and human health. This paper examines new opportunities to design and implement infrastructure that will support not just mass digitization efforts, but also a broad range of research on biological diversity and physical sciences in order to make scientific collections increasingly relevant to societal needs and interest.

Environmental change can create opportunities for increased rates of lineage diversification, but continued species accumulation has been hypothesized to lead to slowdowns via competitive exclusion and niche partitioning. Such density-dependent models imply tight linkages between diversification and trait evolution, but there are plausible alternative models. Little is known about the association between diversification and key ecological and phenotypic traits at broad phylogenetic and spatial scales. Do trait evolutionary rates coincide with rates of diversification, are there lags among these rates, or is diversification niche-neutral? To address these questions, we combine a deeply sampled phylogeny for a major flowering plant clade—Saxifragales—with phenotype and niche data to examine temporal patterns of evolutionary rates. The considerable phenotypic and habitat diversity of Saxifragales is greatest in temperate biomes. Global expansion of these habitats since the mid-Miocene provided ecological opportunities that, with density-dependent adaptive radiation, should result in simultaneous rate increases for diversification, niche, and phenotype, followed by decreases with habitat saturation. Instead, we find that these rates have significantly different timings, with increases in diversification occurring at the mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum (∼15 Mya), followed by increases in niche and phenotypic evolutionary rates by ∼5 Mya; all rates increase exponentially to the present. We attribute this surprising lack of temporal coincidence to initial niche-neutral diversification followed by ecological and phenotypic divergence coincident with more extreme cold and dry habitats that proliferated into the Pleistocene. A lack of density-dependence contrasts with investigations of other cosmopolitan lineages, suggesting alternative patterns may be common in the diversification of temperate lineages.