Delimiting species boundaries within the Neotropical bamboo Otatea (Poaceae: Bambusoideae) using molecular, morphological and ecological data

Species delimitation is a task that has engaged taxonomists for more than two centuries. Recently, it has been demonstrated that molecular data and ecological niche modeling are useful in species delimitation. In this paper multiple data sets (molecular, morphological, ecological) were utilized to set limits for the species belonging to the Neotropical bamboo Otatea, because there is disagreement about species circumscriptions and also because the genus has an interesting distribution, with most of its populations in Mexico and a single disjunct population in Colombia. Molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses recovered trees with conflicting topologies. Tree-based morphological and character-based analyses recognized the same entities. Ecological niche models and PCA/MANOVAS agreed with the recognition of the same entities that resulted from the morphological analyses. Morphological analyses retrieved clades supported by diagnostic characters and coherent geographical distributions. Based on these results seven entities should be recognized in Otatea, instead of the three previously described species.