Revisión Taxonómica Molecular de los Generos Caucaea y Restrepia Orchidaceae

General objective To study the molecular and evolutionary characteristics of the species of the genera Caucaea and Restrepia, including the techniques for their cultivation in greenhouses and laboratories for conservation purposes. Justification 100 new species of plants are described in Ecuador each year, this rate does not seem to decrease, which tells us that there is a lot of work in this field, the largest group of plants are orchids and they represent an urgent goal of meeting 6. Many species are on the waiting list, to be identified, since they have been collected, but they have not been able to identify them, either because of their size, morphological uniformity and the insufficient number of specialists for this work. Molecular methods of identification can solve these problems, but they are still under development, on the other hand the plant material for study is a limitation, especially when they are widely dispersed. An advantage at this point are the characteristics of Ecuador, all the biological diversity is concentrated in a small region, there is a high degree of endemism, the work carried out by collectors and the staff of the Botanical Gardens also joins, which present an opportunity to have ideal living material for our study. The DNA segments: matK, rpoC and ITS, are currently used for the molecular identification of plants, but the variability of these segments is not present in all plant taxa, so other more effective segments are sought for each taxon or establish different combinations between those already known that allow discriminating at the species level, finding the ideal segment will have a better identification system and properly order in species and genera that the species can identify in a short time, especially in groups whose size and morphology is very homogeneous, therefore difficult to distinguish. In another aspect, the dispersion of species and evolutionary mechanisms can be explained today with phylogenetic studies, using the molecular identification database, combined with geographic information, this will allow us to explain why there was a concentration of species in Ecuador, how they spread to other similar regions and analyze the evolutionary process. The species of the genera Caucaea and Restrepia have been identified by their morphological characters, but their size and homogeneity have allowed many errors, molecular techniques can adequately differentiate each species and these groups have new species that need to be published based on these molecular data. . On the other hand, cultivation methods for the species of this genus are known, but in this work the techniques for the maintenance and reproduction of the species of this group will be optimized.