Plant chemophenetics − A new term for plant chemosystematics/plant chemotaxonomy in the macro-molecular era

Abstract

Plant chemosystematic or chemotaxonomic studies based purely on the profiles of small molecules have become obsolete as tools to study phylogenetic relationships of higher plants due to the advent of the much more powerful (macro-) molecular techniques and new methods of data analysis established in parallel to these techniques. A new term is herein proposed for the field of studies aimed at the exploitation of characteristic arrays of specialized natural products of plant taxa: plant chemophenetics. Chemophenetic studies as defined here are studies aimed at describing the array of specialized secondary metabolites in a given taxon. Thus, chemophenetic studies contribute to the phenetic description of taxa, similar to anatomical, morphological, and karyological approaches, which have already been recognized as of major importance for establishing “natural” systems, and which continue to be of the utmost importance for the description of organisms classified with the help of modern molecular methods.