Accelerating the discovery of rare tree species in Amazonian forests: integrating long monitoring tree plot data with metabolomics and phylogenetics for the description of a new species in the hyperdiverse genus Inga Mill

PeerJ

article

Juan Ernesto Guevara Andino¹  Consuelo Hernández²  Renato Valencia³  Dale Forrister⁴  María-José Endara¹ 

[1] Grupo de Investigación en Biodiversidad, Medio Ambiente y Salud-BIOMAS, Universidad de las Americas;Laboratorio de Ecología de Plantas. Herbario QCA, Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador;Laboratorio de Ecología de Plantas. Herbario QCA, Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas,, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador;Department of Biology, University of Utah;Estación de Biodiversidad Tiputini, Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales, Universidad San Francisco de Quito—USFQ

关键词: Rare;    Diversity;    Amazon;    Tree species;    Chemocoding;    Integration;    Plot network;    Monitoring;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.13767

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

In species-rich regions and highly speciose genera, the need for species identification and taxonomic recognition has led to the development of emergent technologies. Here, we combine long-term plot data with untargated metabolomics, and morphological and phylogenetic data to describe a new rare species in the hyperdiverse genus of trees Inga Mill. Our combined data show that Inga coleyana is a new lineage splitting from their closest relatives I. coruscans and I. cylindrica. Moreover, analyses of the chemical defensive profile demonstrate that I. coleyana has a very distinctive chemistry from their closest relatives, with I. coleyana having a chemistry based on saponins and I. cylindrica and I. coruscans producing a series of dihydroflavonols in addition to saponins. Finally, data from our network of plots suggest that I. coleyana is a rare and probably endemic taxon in the hyper-diverse genus Inga. Thus, the synergy produced by different approaches, such as long-term plot data and metabolomics, could accelerate taxonomic recognition in challenging tropical biomes.

【 授权许可】

CC BY