I grew up in Vermont and ventured to the Pacific North West to do my underrate degree at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Or. At L&C I studied Biology and Hispanic Studies. These duel interests really came when I joined the Coley/Kursar lab here at the University of Utah. I have been lucky enough to split my time between analyzing chemistry samples at the U and collecting plants and herbivores in the rainforest of Yasuni, Ecuador. I have loved living in Utah, especially because it allows me to explore nature all year round, from botanizing and camping to skiing and biking.
The need for species identification and taxonomic discovery has led to the development of innovative technologies for large‐scale plant identification. DNA barcoding has been useful, but fails to distinguish among many species in species‐rich plant genera, particularly in tropical regions. Here, we show that chemical fingerprinting, or ‘chemocoding’, has great potential for plant identification in challenging tropical biomes. Using untargeted metabolomics in combination with multivariate analysis, we constructed species‐level fingerprints, which we define as chemocoding. We evaluated the utility of chemocoding with species that were defined morphologically and subject to next‐generation DNA sequencing in the diverse and recently radiated neotropical genus Inga (Leguminosae), both at single study sites and across broad geographic scales. Our results show that chemocoding is a robust method for distinguishing morphologically similar species at a single site and for identifying widespread species across continental‐scale ranges. Given that species are the fundamental unit of analysis for conservation and biodiversity research, the development of accurate identification methods is essential. We suggest that chemocoding will be a valuable additional source of data for a quick identification of plants, especially for groups where other methods fall short.