The genus Virola Aublet belongs to the Myristicaceae, a family of woody species that have significant ecological and ethnobotanical importance worldwide as a component of primarily lowland tropical forests. In the Amazon, the family is represented with 57 species, 11 of which belong to the most common Amazonian trees, i.e. the hyperdominants (terSteege et al. 2013). The Amazon is also the center of diversity of Virola.
In this project I will integrate morphological and molecular data of Virola species across the Neotropics in order to produce a phylogeny for the genus and to assess current morphological species delimitations.