South American Plant Chromosome Numbers Databases: The Information We Have and the Information We Lack on the Most Plant-Diverse Continent

Abstract

Chromosome numbers have been used in plant taxonomy, and they are still fundamental for taxon delimitation and genome evolution studies. South America is one of the most diverse continents in terms of plant species and there is a considerable number of species not yet analyzed. Accumulated knowledge about plant chromosome numbers has been compiled from online databases, and here we present an overview. The CCDB is one of the largest plant cytological databases and includes data for around 18% of known vascular plants in the world. In this work, we review the information contained in CCDB and in three databases with exclusive information for South America. At present, the three existing databases comprise information on around 1800 plant taxa related to specific regions, countries, or biomes. Efforts are necessary to expand cytological knowledge and to collect all the available information in a plant chromosome database for this continent.