1 - Introduction: Establishing the state of the art – the role of morphology in plant systematics

Summary

Outlook

Scientific biological research is dominated by genetics and molecular studies nowadays. This research is extremely important and has led to a tremendous advance in the fields of systematic botany and evolutionary developmental genetics. Nevertheless, from the start the molecular approach grew at the expense of more traditional approaches, such as morphology, embryology, palynology and cytology, and today molecular Barcoding and phylogenetic studies often appear to be the dominant, sometimes exclusive, research areas. Despite this, most systematists would agree that morphological and molecular data are complementary and should, when possible, be used together in phylogenetic and evolutionary investigations. A common approach used in systematics, combining the molecular and morphological methods, routinely maps unexplored morphological characters or putative synapomorphies on well-supported phylogenetic trees in order to study the evolution of these characters. There is an important problem with this approach, that morphological characters can be wrongly defined or are often unknown or superficially assessed. However, understanding the characters used for phylogenetic studies is crucial for understanding evolutionary processes in plants.

A general appreciation of floral morphology is also becoming difficult to grasp, with the disappearance of generalists, and this is not helped by the fact that there is little or no funding for any PhDs that are non-molecular. With the cutback of traditional botany in university education, lack of interest and funding from decision-making bodies, floral morphology is left increasingly aside. This is tragic, because it represents a loss of knowledge, which needs to be ‘rediscovered’ (as currently happens with the oblivion of obscure nineteenth century observations in even more obscure journals) and a non-appreciation of the value of morphology in contributing to solving the biodiversity crisis. Alas, morphology and general botany are increasingly scrapped from university curricula in the constricted atmosphere of ‘efficient’ research funding, with retiring experts not being replaced and with an increased specialization in botany on offer. Very few universities still have a morphology-based, integrative botany course. Recent developments such as genetic Barcoding are undoubtedly useful, but they remove interest and funding from other studies, such as those focusing on floral morphology.