has decreased. The ancestral habitat appears to be forests, followed by early diversification into desert and aquatic habitats, with shrubland the most recent colonization. Species diversification was rapid following a transition from a warmer, wetter Earth in the Eocene (56–40 Myr) to early Miocene (23–16 Myr), to the cooler drier conditions of the mid-Miocene (16–12 Myr). However, this appears to not have coincided with ecological and phenotypic evolution, which are themselves correlated. There is a clear lag, whereby increase in species diversification was followed later by increases in niche and phenotypic lability. Subdivision The first APG classification (1998) placed 13 families within the order Saxifragales: Altingiaceae Cercidiphyllaceae Crassulaceae Daphniphyllaceae Grossulariaceae Haloragaceae Hamamelidaceae Iteaceae Paeoniaceae Penthoraceae Pterostemonaceae Saxifragaceae Tetracarpaeaceae This was subsequently revised to 15, in the fourth version (2016). The Saxifragales families have been grouped into a number of informally named suprafamilial subclades, with the exception of the basal split of Peridiscaceae, which thus forms a sister group with the rest of Saxifragales. The two major ones are (Paeoniaceae + the woody clade of primarily woody families) and the "core" Saxifragales (i.e. the primarily herbaceous families), with the latter subdivided into two further subclades, (Haloragaceae sensu lato + Crassulaceae) and the Saxifragaceae alliance. In the clade Haloragaceae sensu lato (s.l.) + Crassulaceae the genera constituting Haloragaceae s.l. are all small, and APG II (2003) proposed merging them into a single larger Haloragaceae s.l., but transferred Aphanopetalum from Cunoniaceae to this group. The Saxifragaceae alliance represents Saxifragaceae together with a number of woody members of the traditional Saxifragaceae sensu Engler (1930). Within this, APG II (2003) proposed placing the two species of Pterostemon that constitute Pterostemonaceae within Iteaceae, and all subsequent versions have maintained this practice. Thus Saxifragales sensu APG II consisted of only 10 families. The third version (2009) added Peridiscaceae (from Malpighiales), as sister to all other families, but re-expanded Haloragaceae to provide for a narrower circumscription, Haloragaceae sensu stricto (s.s.), to give a total of 14 families. APG IV (2016) added the parasitic family Cynomoriaceae to provide a total of 15 families, although its placement within the order remained unclear. Of the 15 families included in APG IV, the basal divergence Peridiscaceae underwent radical shifting and recircumscription from 2003 to 2009. Originally, it consisted of two closely related genera, Peridiscus and Whittonia. The APG II system placed the family in Malpighiales, based on a DNA sequence for the