Abstract
Although taxonomists target the remote wild regions to discover new species, taxa lacking a comprehensive and modern systematic treatment may be the new hotspot for biodiversity discovery. The development of molecular systematics integrated with microscopic observation techniques has greatly improved the ability of taxonomists to identify species correctly. Vittariacentrochinensis Ching ex J.F. Cheng, regarded as a synonym of Haplopterisfudzinoi (Makino) E.H.Crane, remained hidden from the eyes of fern taxonomists for more than 20 years. Herein, we collected several population samples of V.centrochinensis by performing molecular phylogenetic analysis of five cpDNA regions (rbcL, atpA, matK, ndhF, and trnL-trnF) and through micromophological observation of specimens which differs from H.fudzinoi by lamina width and exospores. Considering the differences in morphology, geographical range, and genetic distance between these two species, we formally recognized V.centrochinensis as an authentic species and proposed a new combination Haplopteriscentrochinensis (Ching ex J.F.Cheng) Y.H.Yan, Z.Y.Wei & X.C.Zhang, comb. nov. Our findings demonstrate that several taxa in synonyms are missing, and nowadays taxonomy should also include re-evaluation of the past taxonomy.
Highlights
The question “How many species are there on earth?” is one of the top 125 questions in science, and exploring it is considered equivalent to imagining the number of stars in the sky (Kennedy and Norman 2005)
The morphological and micromorphological characters of H. centrochinensis and H. fudzinoi are presented in Figure 1 and Table 4
The rhizome scales were yellow-brown, margin denticulate, linear-lanceolate, and clathrate (Fig. 1E left); scale margins of H. centrochinensis were toothed and those of H. fudzinoi were subentire to minutely denticulate at lower margin and upper part, respectively
Summary
The question “How many species are there on earth?” is one of the top 125 questions in science, and exploring it is considered equivalent to imagining the number of stars in the sky (Kennedy and Norman 2005). To understand the biodiversity of species, taxonomists should explore new species and re-evaluate the published species’ names that are considered synonymous with older species’ names. According to the stasis of the web of TPL (The Plant List 2013), more than onethird of species names are unclear and approximately one-third of species names are considered synonymous. With the development in molecular phylogeny research, DNA barcoding, and detailed taxonomic observations, an increasing number of species names have been re-established from the checklist of synonyms, which ranges from ferns (Shu et al 2017; Shu et al 2018; Wei et al 2018; Wang et al 2020) to spermatophyte (Luo et al 2016; Jin et al 2017; Wang et al 2018). We found that the synonym database could be a new hotspot for biodiversity discovery
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