A Step Out of the Chaos—A Nomenclatural Revision of New World Copaifera (Fabaceae, Detarieae)

Abstract

Copaifera L. is a tropical genus with its highest diversity in the New World, renowned for the “copaiba oil” extracted from the trunk of many of its species, which has wide applications in traditional medicine and the pharmachemical industry. Despite relatively recent revisions, the genus is still deemed complex and its species difficult to recognize due to often overlapping circumscriptions. A crucial step in species delimitation and correct application of names is the analysis of types. Advances in the digitization of biological collections and bibliographical material have facilitated the access to type collections, but the information available is still fragmented and, in many cases, equivocal. The aim of this work was to perform a typological assessment of the names of Copaifera based on material from the New World, providing a nomenclatural revision toward a better understanding of its species and a broad taxonomic revision of the genus.