The purpose of this project is to resolve a species complex within the genus Protium (Burseraceae), and to attempt to relate a specimen’s spectral reading to its phylogeny. The resolution of a Protium (Burseraceae) species complex will help scientists studying the Amazon to have a better understanding of a wide range of geographically diverse samples, and the successful use of NIR as a substitute for DNA analysis will support NIR as a faster and cheaper method of studying Protium (Burseraceae) specimens. If successful, the NIR data collected from each specimen can be related to its phylogeny and generalized through a computer model to create an effective method of placing specimens into a phylogeny without phylogenetic data.

Using NIR technology via UC Berkeley’s Fieldspec4, a sample of multiple cryptic species of Protium (Burseraceae) will be scanned for their spectra and compared to one another to identify and differentiate species within the complex. After implementing ViewSpecPro and R programs to compare and analyze the spectral data, the project will shift to creating linear relations between spectra and previously found DNA data from each specimen. An accurate relation of spectra to phylogeny has never been achieved for Protium (Burseraceae) species, however, there is strong evidence that NIR could be used to distinguish cryptic Protium (Burseraceae) species. Based on this, it is expected that the Protium (Burseraceae) species complex studied in this project will be successfully resolved, but a reliable model for predicting phylogeny is unlikely to be generated from the same sample.