What that means, basically, is that it may not be a 100% perfect match to the botanical description of Neo. myrmecophila, but that's the closest thing. It may be a form of that species, or it may be a new, still undescribed species, but nobody's sorted it out yet so they're lumping it in with myrmecophila for the time being.

"cf." is an abbreviation of the latin word "confer", which means "compare to".

Thank you, Lisa.

And one more piece of the puzzle.
I have a Dueter.aff.lorentziana,and have been told that the aff. stands for 'affinity to',or bears a likeness to.
So what then is the botanical difference between 'cf' and 'aff',if they have nearly the same meaning? Or is there no difference? And if no difference,why use both,and who decides to use either of these two descriptions?
Bob

Well now you've opened up a can of worms, Bob. I may have been thinking of "aff." when I wrote the reply above. I did a web search and I found this on a site about fish, but presumeably it would apply to plants as well:

"- aff. = affinis, to species you know are distinct, but closely related. (ex: Apistogramma aff. agassizii, means a fish you know is NOT agassizii, but a related species to it)
- cf. = confer, to species you supose to be same. (ex: Apistogramma cf. agassizii, means a fish you believe to be agassizii, but needs better scientific determination to confirm)"

I was told "affinis" is used when there are only minor differences, and the person working on the plant or animal is not sure if it is different enough to be named as a new species or subspecies. They usually have both plants or animals on hand to compare. I have seen cases where they were killifish or dart frogs were later found to be the same as the species in question, and other times they were elevated to species or subspecies level.

I was told "cf" is used when the they believe it is the same as a known species, but requires comparison with the known species. Quite often the person doing the work cannot do the comparison, but feels it is close enough to possibly be the same. As with the above I have seen animals found to be the same as the ones in question, and other times not.

Yes they are pretty much the same.

I have seen in many reptiles, amphibians, and fish more collection locale information is becoming available. This is being used to help maintain pure strains of the material originally collected, which kind of goes against hybridizing.

Thank you both,Lisa and John,as your info provided a clearer understanding of the differences,slight as they may be,but yet needed. I suppose we'll be seeing some future clarifcations and wording when DNA takes a hold in plant species determinations.
Thanks,Bob

Dr. Glenn Collier began using DNA to identify Killifish probably 15 to 20 years ago, and it has certainly cleared up some things. It has shown that some fish that look alike are not even closely related and some that don't look alike are related. Col. Jorgen Scheel (Dutchman) began the work with killifish, way back in the 60's.

I found an article about a study on bromeliad's DNA.
May be some day we can find out the relationships in Neo. 'Punctate' complex.

Here is a link that might be useful: Relationships in Ananas

The trouble with DNA analysis is that it's impossible for the layman to do. We may struggle with enterpreting the existing keys, but at least they are available to us.