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Fractal analysis of leaf-texture properties as a tool for taxonomic and identification purposes: a case study with species from Neotropical Melastomataceae (Miconieae tribe)

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Abstract

Melastomataceae is a common and dominant family in Neotropical vegetation, with high species diversity which leads to a large variation in some morphological structures. Despite this, some species of Melastomataceae are very similar in their external leaf morphology, leading to difficulties in their identification without the presence of reproductive organs. Here we have proposed and tested a computer-aided texture-based approach used to correctly identify and distinguish leaves of some species of Melastomataceae that occur in a region of Neotropical savanna in Southeastern Brazil, also comparing it with other previously proposed approaches. The results demonstrated that our approach may clearly separate the studied species, analyzing the patterns of leaf texture (both adaxial and abaxial surfaces), and achieving better accuracy (100%) than other methods. Our work has suggested that leaf texture properties can be used as a new characteristic for identification, and as an additional source of information in taxonomic and systematic studies. As the method may be supervised by experts, it is also suitable for discrimination of species with high morphological plasticity, improving the automated discrimination task. This approach can be very useful for identification of species in the absence of reproductive material, and is a rapid and powerful tool for plant identification.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Assis Ecological Station and Instituto Florestal for permission to collect the leaves of the studied species, and Dr Renato Goldenberg for helping with plant identification. Odemir M. Bruno gratefully acknowledges the financial support of CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Brazil) (Grant #306628/2007-4 and #484474/2007-3). Dalcimar Casanova acknowledges support from FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation, Brazil) (2008/57313-2) for his PhD grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratório de Fisiologia Vegetal, Departamento de Botânica, Universidade de Brasília-UnB, Caixa postal 04457, 70904-970, Brasília, DF, Brazil

    Davi Rodrigo Rossatto

  2. Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo-USP, Av. Trabalhador São Carlense, 400, 13560-970, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Dalcimar Casanova & Odemir Martinez Bruno

  3. Faculdade de Ciências e Letras, Departamento de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Estadual Paulista-UNESP, Av. Dom Antônio, 2100, 19806-900, Assis, SP, Brazil

    Rosana Marta Kolb

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  1. Davi Rodrigo Rossatto
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  2. Dalcimar Casanova
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  3. Rosana Marta Kolb
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  4. Odemir Martinez Bruno
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Correspondence to Odemir Martinez Bruno.

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Rossatto, D.R., Casanova, D., Kolb, R.M. et al. Fractal analysis of leaf-texture properties as a tool for taxonomic and identification purposes: a case study with species from Neotropical Melastomataceae (Miconieae tribe). Plant Syst Evol 291, 103–116 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-010-0366-2

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