Format: ORAL

Lucy T. Smith1 Carlos Magdalena1* Natalia A. S. Przelomska1,2,5 Oscar A. Prez-Escobar1* Daro G. Melgar-Gmez3 Stephan Beck4 Raquel Negro1 Sahr Mian1 Ilia J. Leitch1 Steven Dodsworth5 Olivier Maurin1 Gaston Ribero-Guardia6 Csar D. Salazar7 Gloria Gutierrez-Sibauty3 Alexandre Antonelli1,8,9 Alexandre K. Monro1*

1 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, United Kingdom 2 National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States 3 Herbario German Coimbra Sanz, Jardín Botánico Municipal de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia 4 Herbario Nacional de Bolivia, Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia 5 School of Biological Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom 6 La Rinconada Ecoparque, Santa Cruz, Urbari, Bolivia 7 Calle 11 Norte #24, Urbari, Bolivia 8 Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 9 Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom † These authors contributed equally to this work * Corresponding authors

Reliably documenting plant diversity is necessary to protect and sustainably benefit from it. At the heart of this documentation lie species concepts and the practical methods used to delimit taxa. Here, we apply a total-evidence, iterative methodology to delimit and document species in the South American genus Victoria (Nymphaeaceae). The systematics of Victoria has thus far been poorly characterized due to difficulty in attributing species identities to biological collections. This research gap stems from an absence of type material and biological collections, also the confused diagnosis of V. cruziana. With the goal of improving systematic knowledge of the genus, we compiled information from historical records, horticulture and geography and assembled a morphological dataset using citizen science and specimens from herbaria and living collections. Finally, we generated genomic data from a subset of these specimens. Morphological and geographical observations suggest four putative species, three of which are supported by nuclear population genomic and plastid phylogenomic inferences. We propose these three confirmed entities as robust species, where two correspond to the currently recognized V. amazonica and V. cruziana, the third being new to science, which we describe, diagnose and name here as V. boliviana Magdalena and L. T. Sm. Importantly, we identify new morphological and molecular characters which serve to distinguish the species and underpin their delimitations. Our study demonstrates how combining different types of character data into a heuristic, total-evidence approach can enhance the reliability with which biological diversity of morphologically challenging groups can be identified, documented and further studied.