Local plant species delimitation in a highly diverse Amazonian forest: do we all see the same species?

Abstract

Question How reliable is the process of delimiting plant species by morphotyping sterile specimens from a highly diverse Amazonian forest plot? Location Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), Central Amazon, Manaus, Brazil. Methods A taxonomic exercise was conducted during a Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) Taxonomy Workshop held in Manaus in April 2011, using specimens collected in a 25‐ha forest plot. The plant species from this plot had been previously delimited by morphotyping of ca. 80 000 sterile specimens, a process that resulted in the recognition of 115 cases (accounting for 38% of all trees) in which species delimitation was problematic. For the workshop, we selected a subsample of specimens for eight of these difficult cases (taxonomic groups/complexes) and asked 14 participants with different levels of botanical training to independently sort these specimens into morphospecies. We then compared the classifications made by all participants and explored correlations between botanical training and plant classification. Results The classification of specimens into morphospecies was highly variable among participants, except for one taxonomic group/complex, for which the median pair‐wise similarity was 95%. For the other seven taxonomic groups/complexes, median pair‐wise similarity values ranged from 52% to 67%. Training did not increase the similarity in the definition of morphospecies except for two taxonomic groups/complexes, for which there was higher congruence between the classifications made by participants with a high level of botanical training than in comparisons that included less‐experienced participants. The total number of morphospecies defined by participants was highly variable for all taxonomic groups/complexes, with the total number varying from 12 to 46 (a 383% difference). Conclusions Local plant species delimitation by morphotyping sterile specimens is prone to large uncertainties, and botanical training may not reduce them. We argue that uncertainty in species delimitation should be explicitly considered in plant biodiversity inventories as diversity estimates may be strongly affected by such uncertainties. We recommend that species delimitation and identification be treated as separate processes and that difficulties be explicitly recorded, so as to permit error estimates and the refinement of taxonomic data.

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“…Hill and Hamer 2004) may be helpful for conservation decisions where comparative analyses of ecosystems are frustrated by incompatibilities in both scale and the biophysical environment. In cases such as the central Amazon basin, uncertainties surround the correct identification of many plant species (Gomes et al 2013). Such challenges prevent stakeholders, who are otherwise willing, from investing in practical conservation evaluations and management (Meijaard and Sheil 2012).…”

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“…Furthermore, ambiguous scientific names are frequently extracted from vernacular names used during fieldwork, but these names could also vary among regions and parabotanists, causing the same species to have different vernacular names or the same vernacular names are used for different species (Martins-da-Silva et al 2003;Procópio and Secco 2008). However, in the Amazonian region, the high tree-species diversity (ter Steege et al 2016;Cardoso et al 2017) and poor sampling make it difficult to recognize species correctly (Hopkins 2007;Gomes et al 2013).…”

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