marine environments (only a few stoneworts, which belong to this group, tolerate brackish water). Some time during the Ordovician period (which started around ) one or more streptophytes invaded the land and began the evolution of the embryophyte land plants. Present day embryophytes form a monophyletic group called the hemitracheophytes. Becker and Marin speculate that land plants evolved from streptophytes rather than any other group of algae because streptophytes were adapted to living in fresh water. This prepared them to tolerate a range of environmental conditions found on land. Fresh water living made them tolerant of exposure to rain; living in shallow pools required tolerance to temperature variation, high levels of ultra-violet light and seasonal dehydration. Relationships between the groups making up Viridiplantae are still being elucidated. Views have changed considerably since 2000 and classifications have not yet caught up. However, the division between chlorophytes and streptophytes and the evolution of embryophytes from within the latter group, as shown in the cladogram below, are well established. Three approaches to classification are shown. Older classifications, as on the left, treated all green algae as a single division of the plant kingdom under the name Chlorophyta. Land plants were then placed in separate divisions. All the streptophyte algae can be grouped into one paraphyletic taxon, as in the middle, allowing the embryophytes to form a taxon at the same level. Alternatively, the embryophytes can be sunk into a monophyletic taxon comprising all the streptophytes, as shown below. A variety of names have been used for the different groups which result from these approaches; those used below are only one of a number of possibilities. The higher-level classification of the Viridiplantae varies considerably, resulting in widely different ranks being assigned to the embryophytes, from kingdom to class. The precise relationships within the streptophytes are less clear . The stoneworts (Charales) have traditionally been identified as closest to the embryophytes, but recent work suggests that either the Zygnematales or a clade consisting of the Zygnematales and the Coleochaetales may be the sister group to the land plants. That the Zygnematales (or Zygnematophyceae) are the closest algal relatives to land plants was underpinned by an exhaustive phylogenetic analysis (phylogenomics) performed in 2014, which is supported by both plastid genome phylogenies as well as plastid gene content and properties. The preponderance of molecular evidence as of 2006 suggested that the groups making up the embryophytes are