Abstract
Historically, and even today, discovery of new species has remained one of the primary research activities driving the discipline of taxonomy. Discovering scientifically still unknown biodiversity is critical in addressing the taxonomic impediment which is hampering our progress to meet the challenges of global biodiversity crisis. However, in the rush to accelerate the rate of new species’ discoveries, it is crucial to follow objective, stable and reproducible taxonomic criteria. Otherwise, new species’ discoveries based solely on subjective, unstable and non-reproducible characters can be cause of artificial taxonomic inflation in biodiversity data with wider implications in conservation policy and practice. In this study, by integrating empirical evidences from multiple sources, we critically evaluate the validity of two recently described new species of Ephedra in India (E. sumlingensis and E. khurikensis) to underscore the fact that all ‘new’ species are not always new. Use of morphologically plastic characters in diagnosis, discrepancies in the protologues and inconsistencies with the freshly collected live specimens from the type localities clearly revealed that both these species unambiguously fall within the circumscription of already known E. intermedia. With further support from robust analyses of morphometric and molecular data, we recognise both the species as new synonyms of E. intermedia. Based on the lessons learnt from this study, we suggest recommendations to be practised by the taxonomists to avoid such pitfalls in biodiversity data due to arbitrary new species’ discoveries.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and analysed during the current study will be available in the GenBank repository after acceptance of the manuscript.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are sincerely thankful to Curators at DUH, BSD and DD for permitting herbarium specimen study. The authors are highly grateful to Prof. GH Dar, Dr. Ickert-Bond, Dr. Helmet Freitag and Dr. Debabrata Maity for their valuable inputs during the study. We are also thankful to esteemed reviewers and editor for their comments and suggestions, which have helped in improving quality of the manuscript.
Funding
The financial support received from SERB-DST, Govt. of India, New Delhi, under the project “Taxonomic characterization and conservation assessment of Ephedra in India” (Grant No: EMR/2015/000167) and MoEFCC (under AICOPTAX, F. No. 22018/12/2015/RE(Tax), Government of India, New Delhi, to Anzar A. Khuroo is greatly acknowledged.
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AAK, ZAR conceived the idea. AAK designed and supervised the study. ZAR, AAK conducted field studies and collected data. ZAR, KH carried Laboratory work. ZAR, MDD analysed data. ZAR, AAK wrote original draft of the manuscript and also worked on the revision. All the authors reviewed the manuscript and provided their consent for submission.
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Online Resource 1. Voucher details of DNA sequences analyzed during the present study.
Online Resource 2. Sequence alignments of ITS and rbcL regions used in present study.
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Rather, Z.A., Hussain, K., Dwivedi, M.D. et al. ‘New’ species are not always new: a case study of Ephedra sumlingensis and E. khurikensis (Ephedraceae). Plant Syst Evol 308, 26 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-022-01815-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00606-022-01815-1