The New Year Plant Hunt is a yearly event held by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) that helps to record how plants are reacting to our changing climate. Over four days during the Christmas holidays, volunteers will simply head out for walks, of no more than 3 hours each, and record all species seen flowering. The aim of this citizen science project is to record all plants flowering in mid-winter, in order to help document the effects of climate change on plant phenology.
Common gorse (Ulex europaeus)
This year, a total of 1714 people took part in the event and over 14,000 plants were recorded blooming throughout Britain and Ireland. Botanists from TCD joined different local walks. Together with Cian White and fellow naturalists from UCD, we went for a nice walk… on a covered landfill site! Our goal was to study an area that wouldn’t necessarily be surveyed by a less committed group, and I think we did achieve this.
The environment is changing around us at accelerated rates. Scientists and policy makers have come to realize that large-scale international collaboration and global data syntheses are needed in order to understand universal drivers of current global changes. A response to this need was the emergence of several coordinated distributed experiments worldwide in the last decades. In essence, these globally replicated studies are networks of ecologists around the world, who conceptualize the ecological research questions or participate by following a standardized protocol. Because understanding of ecological phenomena often necessitates long-term observations and experiments, data collection is usually replicated not only spatially, but also temporally across several years or decades. Data are periodically sent to the coordinator and groups of participants analyse data and publish scientific papers. All authors are given credit for their work.
A few examples of such global enterprises are: NutNet, the Nutrient Network, which seeks to quantify the impacts of nutrients and consumers on ecosystems in up to 80 grassland sites globally; HerbDivNet, The Herbaceous Diversity Network, studies patterns of diversity in herbaceous plant communities and the factors that cause those patterns at 30 sites in 19 countries; GLORIA, the GLobal Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, targets climate change effects by monitoring diversity shifts in high alpine ecosystems at 121 target regions worldwide. ITEX, the International Tundra Experiment examines the impacts of global warming on tundra ecosystems at more than a dozen sites throughout the world. A recent addition to the list is PLANTPOPNET, the Plant Population Dynamics Network, which is the first to target the long-term monitoring of demographic performance in plant populations worldwide.
Why PLANTPOPNET ? Ecologists use environmental change scenarios to forecast rearrangements in species geographic distribution patterns, such as migrations to track suitable habitats and local extinctions. An overwhelming number of studies use species presences to generate their predictions, assuming for example that if just few individuals are present in a place, the population in that place is doing fine and is guaranteed persistence until conditions change. Such assumptions disregard many ecological mechanisms like local disturbances which may easily swipe populations out of the landscape. To progress further on this problem, PLANTPOPNET proposes to follow the detailed demographic processes of many plant populations globally under contrasting environmental conditions and in interaction with other organisms, measuring year-to-year performance of at least 100 plants per population. The study design will allow ecologists to answer important questions about the environmental and biological drivers of population performance and extinction, how plants adjust their life history strategies in different environments, and what are the demographic mechanisms of plant invasion.
If interested in joining PLANTPOPNET or if you would like to know more information, contact us at buckleyy@tcd.ie.
Authors
Anna Csergo and Yvonne Buckley
Photo credit
http://plantago.plantpopnet.com/
References
Lauchlan H Fraser, Hugh AL Henry, Cameron N Carlyle, Shannon R White, Carl Beierkuhnlein, James F Cahill Jr, Brenda B Casper, Elsa Cleland, Scott L Collins, Jeffrey S Dukes, Alan K Knapp, Eric Lind, Ruijun Long, Yiqi Luo, Peter B Reich, Melinda D Smith, Marcelo Sternberg, and Roy Turkington 2013. Coordinated distributed experiments: an emerging tool for testing global hypotheses in ecology and environmental science. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment11: 147–155. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/110279
Campsite at Ol Pejeta, with Acacia xanthophloea in the background.
During the first week of November I travelled to Kenya to help out on the Tropical Field Ecology course, run by Ian Donahue in the Zoology Department. Final year students from Zoology, Environmental Sciences, and Plant Sciences attended, and I was the postgraduate representative from the Botany Department. While I should under no circumstances be considered a true Botanist-I study plant-animal interactions, and my botanical skills are mediocre at best- I did my best to learn about the amazing tropical flora of this region. I’m sure others will write about the trip in detail, but I thought I would summarize our experience using the dominant or interesting plants we saw in each place we travelled.
Day 1&2- Arrive in Nairobi: After spending the night in the United Kenya Club, we awoke to a 5 hour drive north to Laikipia County. Along the way the most striking plants were ornamental and known to a number of the students already- for example, colourful Bougainvillea was visible from quite a distance, as were the beautiful flowering Jacaranda trees- neither of course are native to the region.
Day 3-Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Laikipia County: We camped for the next two days in Ol Pejeta, and although we experienced quite a bit of rain, it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The campsite was on the river and surrounded by Acacia xanthophloea, known to the locals as “Yellow fever acacia” for its medicinal properties. It has a yellow-green bark which makes it quite distinctive. On game drives we saw a lot of scrubby shrub species, none in flower. It was difficult to identify many of the species in the conservancy but we were told many of them belong to the genus Euclea. We also got our first glimpse of Solanum incanum but more on that later.
Solanum incanum at the Chimpanzee sanctuary in Ol Pejeta
Day 4- Nakuru: Compared to Ol Pejeta the flowering flora here was a breeze to identify! Although a lot of it comprised invasive species, such as Lantana and Datura species, and of course the conspicuous Solanum incanum (also known as Sodom’s Apple). S. incanum gives the management at Nakuru serious trouble, growing uncontrolled in areas that are over grazed or disturbed by humans. In addition to the invasives we saw a lot of Leonotis mollissima and identified a lovely shrub called Tarchonanthus camphorates from its camphor scented leaves.
Day 5-11-Baringo County: And finally, after quite a lot of driving (during which we saw some impressive Euphorbia candelabra specimen), we arrived in Baringo County. Our first day here we went for a hike at Lake Bogoria, and spotted two species of interest. First, the indigenous Adenium obesum, or Desert Rose. Some of the students carried out their mini-project on the nectar secretion and flower visitation of this species, and found nectar volume varies with time of day. Second, we saw Salvadora persica, known as the “toothbrush tree.” Our local guide told us people chew the twigs to promote dental hygiene. Throughout the county, two new species of Acacia were also evident- Acacia tortilis (The Umbrella Thorn, accurately named after its shape) and Acacia mellifera. Women in the area highly value A. mellifera because the honeybees they keep apparently favour it for making particularly sweet honey. And finally, one cannot forget to mention the damaging invasive Prosopis juliflora. Native to Mexico and Central America, it was introduced to try and control soil erosion and now has spread throughout the county. It is difficult to remove as it can regenerate from the roots, and is not particularly useful as fuel, food for livestock or fencing.
Adenium obesum, Desert Rose at our campsite in Baringo, Robert’s Camp
This description is simply the most obvious vegetation we saw on the field course. The diversity of flora and fauna was overwhelming and I think the students, demonstrators, and staff alike were impressed and awed by the environments we were fortunate enough to experience. Kenya is truly an amazing place!
