Essential oil constituents as the chemosystematic markers in Eugenia L. (Myrtaceae): An evolutionary perspective

Eugenia L. is the most specious Neotropical genus in the Myrtaceae family, which many species are essential oil producers. Here, we aim to investigate the use of the main compounds of the essential oils of 73 species of Eugenia as chemosystematic markers and understand their evolutionary history within the genus. We designed four matrices of phytochemical data based on literature review of the composition of essential oils of the Eugenia species. Then, the phytochemical matrices were combined with well-known molecular markers for the genus in order to test the best coding strategy for the use of phytochemical data as phyloge-netic markers. Statistical analyses of correlation, regression and principal component analysis were also per -formed. We discovered the addition of phytochemical data increased the support values of the phylogenetic analysis, corroborating and making the infrageneric circumscription proposed for Eugenia more robust (PP > 94). PCA statistical analyses corroborated the phylogenetic hypothesis with the pattern of distribution of Eugenia sections reflected on the infrageneric phylogenetic relationships of these sections. Over evolutionary time, the diversification of species in Eugenia sections was concomitant with the increase in the variety of types of chemical compounds present in the essential oils of their representatives, as indicated by the results of statistical analyzes (r > 0.8; p-value < 0.05). The conclusion of this study is that essential oils can perform the role of chemosystematic markers in Eugenia.& COPY; 2023 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of SAAB.