Morphological cluster analysis of the genus Parodia (Cactacea) João Alfredo Gomes de Moura, André Fabiano de Castro Vicente, Fabio Giordano

Abstract

This work presents the taxonomic study of Cactaceae carried out at the Plantarum Botanical Garden located at Av. Brasil, 2000, in the city of Nova Odessa - SP. The methodology includes the analysis of herbarium collections and collection. The genus has great ecological importance due to the diversity of habits and distinct patterns of morphology, anatomy and distribution that provide subsidies for taxonomic, ecological and cladistic works. Therefore, the present work aimed to propose a hypothesis about the systematics of the genus Paródia, indicating groupings of some species through cladistic analysis based on morphological data perceptible to the naked eye. Eleven species chosen for evident morphological characters were analyzed, based on presence or absence. The data were tabulated and a dendrogram was generated in R mode (species) that presents 03 groupings, one grouping with 4 species and the other with 3 individuals. Two species did not form groups, according to the Jaccard index for the applied group pairing technique (cophenetic correlation coefficient 0.89).