Elusive species criteria and paradigms of botany

Abstract

The development of botanical science and the improvement of methods used to identify the boundaries of species lead to constant changes in the criteria and volume of species in various systematic groups of plants. Currently, to solve these problems, modern methods of geno- and chemosystematics (for example, use of PCR, ITSS, and other markers), methods of discriminant and factor analyses, assessment of boundaries of ecological and climatic niches of different species, approaches of chemosystematics and metabolomics are used. However, the emergence of a large number of different modern approaches to estimate the volume of species has not simplified the task of plant taxonomists. Instead, it gave them the task to select or reasonably combine reliable methods. The latter would allow to progress in solving this difficult tasks and set priorities for the development of an integrated methodological approach to the study criteria and volumes of species.