Sarracenia flava var. cuprea

Sarracenia flava var. cuprea, the copper-colored variety of the yellow pitcher plant described by Donald Schnell in 1998. This taxon is the progenitor of several popular copper lid cultivars. The photo was taken at Hortus Botanicus in Leiden during the International Carnivorous Plant Society conference in 2010.

October's Berry Go Round and crowd funding of science

Unexpectedly, I found that my post on protogeocarpy was included in October's Berry Go Round, a blog carnival on plant science, over at Slugyard. Mike B. of Slugyard put the carnival together in a pretty neat way, adapting Poe's "The Raven" for the Halloween edition of the Berry Go Round.

Hyobanche sanguinea, a parasitic plant native to South Africa and the subject of Andi Wolfe's #SciFund project.
Photo source: Winfried Bruenken, Wikimedia Commons.

Unrelated by also interesting, have you noticed all of the opportunities out there for crowd funding a project? Musicians and artists have been ahead of the curve on this trend; for example, I'm supporting the recording of The Guggenheim Grotto's next album over at PledgeMusic. And then there's a multi-year project of one artist seeking support on Kickstarter to complete a beautiful illuminated manuscript of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (h/t Matt Young at Panda'sThumb). So just a few months ago, a few scientists got together and wondered, "Hey! Where are our crowd funding opportunities. Will it work for science?"

You bet it will work! I would encourage you to check out Andi Wolfe's #SciFund project and support it if you can. Andi is a professor in the department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at The Ohio State University that I just began attending this autumn, and the funding from her #SciFund project will support undergraduate research. (Also check our her lab's blog.)

I think overall that the #SciFund challenge will benefit scientists and the public. Scientists must strive to explain often difficult topics to a "why should I care?" public, flexing their PR muscles, and the public gets the opportunity to feel like they're a part of the scientific process. It's exciting and I can't wait to see what comes from it. Good luck, Andi!

Let me rewrite that headline for you...

Arthritic dog lays down for an hour, falls asleep, seems more calm

...or as the New Jersey Herald puts it, "Reiki expert channels energy to heal pets, humans."

No, really. I was shocked. This is journalism? I was also a little embarrassed; this is my hometown newspaper. I always thought it outperformed the newspaper of my adopted hometown, Mount Vernon, Ohio. In my opinion, this was an abominable piece of journalism.

When Cindy Nolte arrived at the home of her client for their afternoon Reiki session, Kodi was waiting for her. Walking with a slight limp because of his severe spinal arthritis, Kodi braved the discomfort to rush to greet her.

The pair walked inside and Kodi lay down on the living room floor as Nolte began to meditate and focus a positive energy flow to Kodi's aching bones and muscles.

Within moments, Kodi's labored breathing had slowed down, and he slowly began to relax into a sleep-like state. Nolte used no words, she didn't even touch Kodi during their hour-long session that seemed to leave Kodi re-energized and invigorated.

I can't believe my hometown newspaper reports this pseudoscience as if it were real, with no disclaimers or editorializing by the journalist that these practices are unproven and frequently mocked by the scientific community. And shame on that woman, Cindy Nolte of Fresh Look on Life, for taking advantage of gullible and desperate people by telling them she can make them (and their pets?) feel better just by thinking at them. Dear lord, just think of the harm she could do if she turned her healing thoughts to murderous ones! (Snake oil, anyone?)

Seriously, though, that this passes muster for journalism (or at best a fluff piece) does not bode well for the journalism profession or the New Jersey Herald. I am sad to say that I've lost respect for the paper.

Acting as a conduit for the flow of positive healing energy, Nolte uses her experience to help her clients quiet their minds and connect to the energy, which can be challenging for busy humans.

"Some people have never tried anything like this before, and trying to quiet their minds after 30 or 40 years is a challenge. Just think of contacting a friend after 30 years; there is a lot to talk about. It's the same for us. We really don't talk to ourselves, so there is a lot of chatter to get through," Nolte said. "We need to learn to go inward and accept ourselves at our own individual level."

Oh. So Cindy Nolte is some sort of life coach that teaches people how to relax. Why not just say that? Why couch the albeit mockable need for a life coach in reiki healing energy woo and weirdness? If you ignore the reiki, this sounds somewhat reasonable. Relaxation is good, and some people are bad at doing it. But she doesn't stop there:

Animals, on the other hand, seem to have a natural understanding of Reiki and the energy it uses to heal, Nolte said. This allows them to benefit from the treatment that the Reiki sessions provide.

Oh. They do? Dear journalist, where's the balance? Actually, screw balance, where is the outright mocking of this pseudoscience? Where's the scientist in the article exposing this practice for the ridiculous assertion that it is with not a shred of evidence to support it? Even a single throwaway line from a local scientist would have been an improvement, though overall the article would still be a loss for those who value logic and reason.

Yes, I realize this article was a slice-of-life in-the-community approach, but it wrongly lends the validity of the newspaper to the laughably irrational tenets of reiki practitioners, who are no more rational in their beliefs than proponents of homeopathy. Unfortunately, people with little knowledge of science could be easily convinced by this charlatan, Cindy Nolte, and her thought energy. I encourage all readers to visit Quackwatch's examination of reiki and this entertaining piece at scienceblogs for a pretty thorough debunking.

I look forward to the next article in the series from the New Jersey Herald on how someone is selling vials of homeopathic "treatments" consisting entirely of water and how it's helping relieve her client's pet opposum's tinnitus. I'm sure Betty the opposum writes excellent testimonials.

Protogeocarpy in the bizarre Australian plant genus Alexgeorgea

Alexgeorgea - male vegetative plant with inflorescences (left), a female vegetative
plant (center), and the above ground portion of the female flower (right), positioned
for the comparison but would normally be shorter. Source: Sherwin Carlquist.

Botanists often love language, so much so that they attach a name to even rare phenomena - odd, tongue-twisting descriptive names that are so infrequently used that one sometimes wonders why they bother at all. Wading into the obscure language of botanists today I encountered this doozie: protogeocarpy. Breaking the term down into its constituent parts gives us proto (before), geo (ground), carpy (relating to the carpel - the ovule and seed producing reproductive organ). Perhaps two-thirds of this word looks familiar to you. The news of the newly described genuflecting geocarpic plant from Brazil, Spigelia genuflexa, has made headlines around the world as a photogenic botanical oddity. I even wrote about it briefly.

Most dictionaries and encyclopedias will tell you that geocarpy is a process by which a plant stem or inflorescence elongates and deposits the developing fruits into the ground. And they will probably mention the famous example of the peanut being buried up to 10 cm below ground. But that's not entirely accurate. Geocarpy is a broad term that encompasses any subterranean ripening of the fruit. Technically, Spigelia genuflexa and peanuts are perfect examples of a type of geocarpy known as hysterocarpy, "in which the fertilized ovary penetrates into the soil by means of a long peduncle," according to the book Dispersal Biology of Desert Plants by Karen van Rheede van Oudtshoorn and Dr. Margaretha W. van Rooyen. In other words, these flowers were fertilized above ground, then the developing fruits were deposited into the soil later. In another twist, only some of the fruits of Spigelia genuflexa were deposited, which the authors of Dispersal Biology would further demarcate as an amphicarpic habit.

The subterranean fruit of Alexgeorgea,
about the size and shape of an acorn.
Source: Sherwin Carlquist.

So in keeping with our geocarpic plant theme, let me introduce the small Australian genus Alexgeorgea. In sharp contrast to the above examples, the three species in this Western Australian genus of restiads (members of the Restionaceae family, related to grasses and sedges) produce their female flowers below ground with all but the stigmas, the pollen-receptive part of the carpel, being subterranean. These are truly protogeocarpic plants because fertilization of the ovary and maturation of the fruit occur below ground.

The male plants (yes, the plants in this genus are dioecious, meaning there are separate male and female plants) of Alexgeorgea nitens appear like many other Australian restiads, so much so that it was first described by the German botanist Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck in 1846 as Restio nitens. von Esenbeck had mistaken deformed portions of plants above ground, possibly the result of a smut fungus, as the fruit and included this information in his description when placing it in the large genus Restio. Overlooked for the next 130 years were the subterranean fruits of this species until Sherwin Carlquist, an American botanist and one of my botanical heroes, noticed the ephemeral thread-like stigmas of the female flowers emerging from the sand. He admitted that had he not been present during the short period in which the plants produce the female flowers, the peculiar subterranean flowers and fruits would have likely remained unknown to science. Carlquist first came upon these plants in 1974 and later described two species in a new genus named in honor of the Australian botanist Alex George in 1976. Consider how fortuitous this discovery was in not only being in the right place at the right time, but also being able to recognize that the minute above ground portion of the female flower no more 3 cm tall was worthy of further investigation.

Male flowers in the background;
emergent female flower parts seen
in front as red or purple threads.
Source: Sherwin Carlquist.

What you see above and to the right in the photo is a portion of the underground rhizome, which can be several meters long. The female flowers are borne directly on the rhizome 10 to 15 cm below ground in white sandy soils. Overall, Alexgeorgea species are not the most attractive species out there, but they have a certain charm in their unusual habits.

But why? What conditions lead to the evolution of geocarpy? What are the advantages? Carlquist hypothesized that in Alexgeorgea the evolution of a single-seeded subterranean fruit was an adaptation in response to a predominant fire ecology in Western Australia. Fruits at or below ground are protected from the extreme heat of fire. Indeed, many other plants in Western Australia have adapted to frequent fires by producing their fruits at ground level (basicarpy). More widely, geocarpy is assumed to have evolved in several plant lineages in response to the harsh environments in which the species grows. In Dispersal Biology of Desert Plants, it is noted that plants may develop a geocarpic habit to ensure close proximity of the offspring in favorable micro-habitats. For example, Alexgeorgea persists in seasonally wet peaty sand and if it instead relied on wind dispersal of its fruit, it is assumed that a larger percentage of offspring would fail to germinate in favorable soils by being blown far from the small region in which it can thrive. The disadvantages are obvious: restriction of seed dispersal, limitation of population genetic structure, and the possibility of small stochastic events wiping out entire colonies.

Regardless, this is a fascinating plant habit and an equally fascinating genus. Leave it to Australia to bring us yet another botanical oddity!

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References:

Carlquist, S. (1976). Alexgeorgea, a bizarre new genus of Restionaceae from Western Australia.
Australian Journal of Botany, 24 (2), 281-295 DOI: 10.1071/BT9760281

Briggs, B., Johnson, L., & Krauss, S. (1990). The species of Alexgeorgea, a Western Australian genus of the Restionaceae. Australian Systematic Botany, 3 (4), 751-758 DOI: 10.1071/SB9900751

Spigelia genuflexa: You reap what you sow

Spigelia genuflexa leaning over to deposit its seed in the soft soil. Photo by Alex Popovkin (CC by 2.0)

If you haven't yet checked out the beautiful photos of this newly described species, definitely do so. Spigelia genuflexa Popovkin & Struwe is a member of the Loganiaceae, or strychnine family, just described yesterday in the journal PhytoKeys. It is unusual in the family by its geocarpic habit; I'll let Alex Popovkin and his co-authors explain:

During fruit maturation, the basal infructescences bend down towards the ground, depositing the fruit on the surface (and burying it in soft kinds of ground cover, e.g., moss), whereas the upper ones do so slightly but noticeably.

This plant clearly doesn't trust that gravity will do the job appropriately. A geocarpic habit is rare but common enough to have representatives in several families. The most interesting to me about this story is that the first author of the study and one of the authors of the taxon is an amateur botanist in Brazil whose efforts have paid off. And as an aside, the guest editor for Popovkin's paper was Sandra Knapp, the botanist I mentioned earlier who was instrumental in successfully altering the botanical nomenclature code to allow online publication of new taxa.

ScienceDaily published a decent press release on this new species and the University of British Columbia's Botany Photo of the Day provided an excellent summary. (I highly recommend adding the Botany Photo of the Day site to your RSS feed.)

Fabulous news: Nepenthes thorelii has been rediscovered

Time to celebrate! Botanist François Mey has confirmed that Nepenthes thorelii, a tropical pitcher plant native to Vietnam, has been rediscovered. This species was first collected in the mid-1800s, then formally named in 1909, but has most recently only been known from the earlier herbarium specimens. All specimens in cultivation that were labeled N. thorelii were revealed to be related, but did not share key morphological characteristics with the type specimens of the species. And so, it was thought that N. thorelii could have been extinct both in the wild and in cultivation.

Then, in 2009, thoreliigate happened. Vietnamese growers uploaded photos to one of the carnivorous plant forums, showing them holding plants that François identified as true N. thorelii. At one point, the Vietnamese growers refused to cooperate further. When François and other experts searched for the plants at the type location and in the exact spot of the photos, no plants matching the description of N. thorelii were located. It's really quite sad as these plants were clearly poached and sold.

But now François, along with botanist Alastair Robinson, is back in Vietnam and has successfully rediscovered a population of N. thorelii. As Alastair notes, this is the first time in 102 years that qualified botanists have been able to see the plants in situ and collect proper herbarium specimens. Their initial reports and some beautiful photographs can be found here. According to the comments in the forum posts, there are about 100 plants of both genders at this site, located on military land, so chances are that it will remain protected.

Congratulations to all involved! Work like this is very valuable in conservation and taxonomy. Truly fabulous news.

The great golden digger wasp returns!

The great golden digger wasps (Sphex ichneumoneus), which I wrote about in a post last year on free will and the Concorde fallacy, returned this year to the same spot in front of Higley Hall at Kenyon College in the soft, gravelly soils under an overhang. A swarm of dedicated females has been entertaining our equally dedicated summer science students and visitors. The nest site is conveniently right outside large floor-to-ceiling windows, perfect for viewing the activity of this wasp species. Their short lives will come to an end soon, but they have been able to dig, provision, and complete dozens of burrows. Brava, wasps. I hope this site remains popular for the species for years to come.

Botanists vote to allow online publication of new taxa

The excitement (and nervous uncertainty) is tangible on botanical taxonomy e-mail lists with the recent news that the nomenclature section of the International Botanical Congress, the governing body of the rules on how we describe new species and other taxa, voted at this year's Melbourne conference to drop the requirement that all new taxa must be described in print publications. If the rule is adopted by the whole Congress, we'll soon see new taxa being published in online-only peer-reviewed journals like PLoS ONE.

Much of the discussion on online-publishing has surrounded the necessity for proper archiving and a sense of permanence on an otherwise ephemeral online realm where the paradox that full permanence may not be achievable yet it's hard to completely erase some online substance reigns. Last year Sandra Knapp of London's Natural History Museum took this outdated policy to task and defiantly published four new species of Solanum in PLoS ONE. She was able to skirt the printed publication requirement by following the other International Code of Botanical Nomenclature rules that allowed her to print out at least 10 copies and distribute them to libraries and a central name index. If the full IBC follows suit and votes for this new rule allowing online publication of new species, no one will have to follow Knapp's example.

This issue had come up at the last Congress in Vienna six years ago, but online journals were just getting off the ground and archiving systems were either poorly managed or lacking entirely. Heck, I was still using Livejournal. A lot has changed in the past six years. The measure didn't pass in Vienna, which I think was the right decision. We waited long enough that the technology caught up to meet the rigorous demands of proper taxon description.

Levenhookia murfetii from Mount Lesueur, Western Australia
Lowrie A, and Conran JG. 2011. Triggerplant Journal 1 (2): 4-29.

In a related matter, I recently noticed that noted Australian botanist Allen Lowrie, famous for his carnivorous plant descriptions, has described a new species of stylewort (Levenhookia) in the online-only Triggerplant Journal (Volume 1, Number 2), founded by Douglas Darnowski and Greg Bourke. It's beautifully illustrated with lovely photos, but as far as I can tell, and even though the journal has an ISSN, the description by Lowrie and his colleague John G. Conran of the new species Levenhookia murfetii (named in honor of Denzel E. Murfet) is not "effective" yet. And so until the new rules from the IBC go into force, all publications of new taxa should still be in print, or at the very least Lowrie and Conran need to print out ten copies of their article from the journal and submit it to libraries and one index, just as Sandra Knapp did with her Solanum species. It may be early to judge based on this, but so far the name Levenhookia murfetii has not been entered into the International Plant Names Index.

Update (27 July 2011): I recently heard from Greg Bourke, one of the publishers of the Triggerplant Journal, that the description of the new species Levenhookia murfetii was indeed printed out and distributed to validate the description. This is good news for this particular description. Perhaps IPNI is just behind on updating the database.

Now the zoologists can sit back and be jealous of the botanists, since the ICBN's zoological counterpart, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, has been considering such an amendment to their rules since 2008 but it has not yet taken any action. I'm okay with this.

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Lowrie, A., & Conran, J.G. (2011). An overview of the Australian Levenhookia (Stylidiaceae) complex, including a new species (L. murfetii) and observations on the triggering methods employed for pollination and outcrossing. Triggerplant Journal, 1 (2), 4-29

ASM 2011 Conference: New Orleans

I have arrived in lovely New Orleans! For the next couple of days, I'll be spending my time at the general meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in lovely New Orleans. I'm here at what will likely be my last ASM conference with the Slonczewski Lab from Kenyon College, where we are presenting our recent work on multi-drug efflux pumps, pH homeostasis, and fluorescence microscopy. It's really a great education for the undergraduates that my PI, Dr. Joan Slonczewski, brings along to the meeting.

The opening session was this evening and, I think, much better than the previous two years. Each of the three lectures was intriguing, accessible, and well-prepared. I was reassured that I will be heading off to graduate school in the right direction - evolution and ecology - by the fact that I found the lecture by Dr. Nicole Dubilier on symbiotic relationships between sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and marine invertebrates most enjoyable. Similarly, last year in San Diego at ASM 2010, I thought the best opening lecture was that by Dr. Nancy Moran, who spoke about her work on the relationship between endosymbiotic bacteria and leafhoppers that I wrote about last year.

The second lecture by Dr. Liping Zhao was equally fascinating. He discussed what eating well does for us physically via our microbial gut flora. This work has been in the news somewhat, but I found the thorough lecture perfect for tying together all the disparate pieces of the story. His work shows that for morbidly obese people, a change in diet from a high fat, low fiber diet to a more sensible one allows the microbiome in the gut to shift from an abundance of pathogenic organisms that can cause longterm disease to beneficial and benign organisms. For some reason, the attendees at the reception after the lectures seemed much more restrained around the over-abundance of food in the exhibit hall...

The last lecture, which I found the most difficult to follow from the detail and fast pace, was on environmental stressors that can trigger heritable changes in the organisms studied, mostly yeast. We're not talking Lamarckian giraffe's neck scale of environmentally acquired traits, but the analogy was striking.

That's all for now, but I may check in at least once more during the meeting if I'm not too exhausted in the evenings. Tomorrow we dine at the Court of Two Sisters, which sounds exciting.

Backyard biology: New greenhouse

Since I've made the decision to accept my admission offer to Ohio State University's Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology PhD program beginning in autumn 2011, assuring my presence in central Ohio for several more years, Adam and I decided to take advantage of a great deal on a greenhouse:

Yes, it's a rickety aluminum-frame polycarbonate panel 6' × 8' that probably won't retain very much heat in an Ohio winter, but at least I have something I've always wanted! Adam and I spent last weekend digging out the site, leveling the foundation lumber, and hauling stone to fill in the base. Once the landscaping grows in, we should have a fantastic little hide-away nook behind the greenhouse, perfect for an Adirondack chair or two.


The greenhouse will not be heated much in the winter, making it the perfect spot to overwinter hibernating Sarracenia, like those I just received from the North American Sarracenia Conservancy (NASC).

 These Sarracenia alata seedlings are propagated by members of the Grower Committee at NASC from legally-collected parent plants to maintain the genetic variety of these rare and threatened carnivorous plants. The plants I received today were from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. If I do everything right, they'll grow, flower, and possibly be reintroduced in suitable locations. Many of the plants NASC acquires are from boggy habitats that are bulldozed in the name of progress or road widening. This is an excellent example of ex-situ conservation and is meant to be a complementary component to land acquisition and conservation easements (in-situ conservation).

I suppose I'm still thrilled with the idea of having my own greenhouse just steps away, but I imagine I will become less enthusiastic about it this winter when I need to trudge out there through feet of snow.