Taxonomic novelties of Piper (Piperaceae) from the Amazonian slopes of the Northern Andes
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Grupo de investigaciones territoriales para el uso y conservación de la biodiversidad, Fundación Reserva Natural La Palmita, Centro de Investigación, Carrera 4 No 58 – 59, Bogotá, Colombia; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Grupo DIVERSITAS, Facultad de Ciencias Básicas y Aplicadas, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, km 2 Via Cajicá–Zipaquirá, Cajicá, Colombia; e-mail: [email protected]
Abstract. Three new species of Piper from the Amazon slopes of the Andes in Colombia, Piper pseudopeculiare, P. resinaense, and P. tarquiense are described and illustrated, and morphological comparisons with similar species are discussed. Keywords: Colombia, new species, Piperales, tropical montane forest.
Piperaceae is a family of pantropical distribution with ~ 3500 species grouped in five genera, of which Manekia, Peperomia, and Piper are found in Colombia (Jaramillo & Callejas, 2004; Wanke et al., 2007; Samain et al., 2008). Piper, with about 1300 species (Quijano et al., 2006), is one of the most species rich genera of flowering plants globally and in Colombia (Frodin, 2004; Bernal et al., 2015). The western Amazon (from Colombia through Peru), and the Chocó Region are the areas with the highest concentration of Piper species (Callejas, 2001). The tropical Andes are considered by Mittermeier et al. (1998) as one of the priority land ecoregions worldwide. Colombia, as an integral part of this region (together with Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia), contributes about 23% of the total Andean area (28,771 km). Colombia exhibits a complex mosaic of ecosystems resulting from a diversity of climates, geology, geomorphology, and soils (Rodríguez et al., 2004). The Amazonian slopes of the Colombian Andes have been poorly studied, and there are floristic information gaps. The most detailed botanical expeditions in the area were those carried out by José Cuaterecasas in the 1940s. Cuatrecasas collected numerous new species, however, since then, few floristic studies have
Received 16 February 2020; accepted 11 September 2020.
been attempted (Trujillo et al., 2015). We are reaching almost 80 years with negligible advances in botanical and biodiversity research in this region, which is characterized by a high number of taxa with restricted distribution and endemism (Hernández-Camacho et al., 1992). Undoubtedly there are many species unknown to science from this area. Fortunately, since 2007, the first author (WTC) has collected Piper on the Amazonian slopes of the Andes in the northwest of the department of Caquetá in Colombia. This article is the third (Trujillo & Callejas, 2015; Trujillo & Jaramillo, 2019) in a series of contributions to the taxonomic knowledge of the genus Piper in the Amazonian slope of the Andes after 10 years of taxonomic studies in the region. In this article we describe and illustrate three new species and discuss their morphological differences with similar species.
Material and methods Specimens were collected in the Amazonian slopes of the Andes in southern Colombia, in the department
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