Jurgen Appelo (CC BY 2.0)
Species are crucial units to Biology and determining their boundaries has many consequences conservation and management efforts - for instance, Endangered species list. Depending on the organism, it is not so simple to determine whether an animal, a microorganism or a plant belongs to a species X or Y.
It is exactly the case of a plant endemic to the Atlantic rainforest and Cerrado (Brazilian savanna). Clusia criuva complex is a 'species' with two subspecies (C. criuva subsp. parviflora and C. criuva subps. criuva) but whose differences are solely based on flower morphology and geographic origin. To test whether these subspecies could be independently evolving lineages, therefore different species, we used molecular markers and ecological modelling. Our results showed that indeed we may be dealing with two species! This species complex may be not that complicated!
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