Reliably documenting plant diversity is necessary to protect and sustainably benefit from it. At the heart of this documentation lie species concepts and the practical methods used to delimit taxa. Here, we apply a total-evidence, iterative methodology to delimit and document species in the South American genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae). The systematics of Victoria has thus far been poorly characterized due to difficulty in attributing species identities to biological collections. This research gap stems from an absence of type material and biological collections, also the confused diagnosis of V. cruziana. With the goal of improving systematic knowledge of the genus, we compiled information from historical records, horticulture and geography and assembled a morphological dataset using citizen science and specimens from herbaria and living collections. Finally, we generated genomic data from a subset of these specimens. Morphological and geographical observations suggest four putative species, three of which are supported by nuclear population genomic and plastid phylogenomic inferences. We propose these three confirmed entities as robust species, where two correspond to the currently recognized V. amazonica and V. cruziana, the third being new to science, which we describe, diagnose and name here as V. boliviana Magdalena and L. T. Sm. Importantly, we identify new morphological and molecular characters which serve to distinguish the species and underpin their delimitations. Our study demonstrates how combining different types of character data into a heuristic, total-evidence approach can enhance the reliability with which biological diversity of morphologically challenging groups can be identified, documented and further studied.

41Background: Microbial communities present in environmental waters constitute a reservoir for antibiotic-42 resistant pathogens that impact human health. For this reason a diverse variety of water environments are 43 being analyzed using metagenomics to uncover public health threats. However, the composition of these 44 communities along the coastal environment of a whole city where sewage and beach waters are mixed, is 45 poorly understood. 47Results: We shotgun-sequenced 20 coastal areas from the city of Montevideo (capital of Uruguay) including 48 beach and sewage water samples to characterize bacterial communities and their virulence and antibiotic 49 resistance repertories. We found that sewage and beach environments presented significantly different 50 bacterial communities. Sewage waters harbored a higher prevalence and a more diverse repertory of virulence 51 and antibiotic resistant genes mainly from well-known enterobacteria, including carbapenemases and 52 extended-spectrum betalactamases reported in hospital infections in Montevideo. Additionally, we were able 53 to genotype the presence of both globally-disseminated pathogenic clones as well as emerging antibiotic-54 resistant bacteria in sewage waters. 56Conclusions: Our study represents the first in using metagenomics to jointly analyze beaches and the sewage 57 system from an entire city, allowing us to characterize antibiotic-resistant pathogens circulating in urban 58 waters. The data generated in this initial study represent a baseline metagenomic exploration to guide future 59 longitudinal (time-wise) studies, whose systematic implementation will provide useful epidemiological 60 information to improve public health surveillance. 61 62