Two new Malagasy species of genus Piper L. (Piperaceae), Piper malgassicum and Piper tsarasotrae, and their phylogenetic position

Abstract

Here we describe two new species of genus Piper L. from Madagascar: Piper malgassicum and Piper tsarasotrae, the speciesnames referring to the currently known distribution areas. These two species contribute, at least in part, to the production of localvoatsiperifery pepper, probably mixed together with P. borbonense, and are therefore economically relevant as spices. We used a selectedset of characters (those more easily observable on herbarium samples) for principal component analysis to assess the relative distancebetween the species, including the analysis of the autochthonous species of Piper known from Africa and Madagascar. In order to checkthe identity and assess the phylogenetic position of the two species, we also sequenced the chloroplast gene ndhF, the trnL intron, and thenuclear gene G3pdh. On the basis of these results we show here the relationships between these two new Piper taxa and the most closelyrelated species within the genus (excluding P. heimii and P. pachyphyllum, for which only morphological characters were available).