Lab Research Days

Some of the lab members enjoying a walk under a waterfall in the reserve.

Research days have proven to be an excellent forum for lab members to report what we’re are up to, to discuss our ongoing work and exchange ideas for what’s next. From the 17th to the 20th of February 2019, the lab stayed in the research accommodation at Kamberg Nature Reserve in order to do just that. The days involved talks from every lab member who could join as well as exploring the beautiful nature reserve around us. It was also a great opportunity to get to know our fellow lab members – the new and the mainstays.

The joy of eating good food with good people after a day of good talks…

Working as part of a lab is important because of the interaction that is made possible by the experience. Science can be a lonely career. For those of us who are field biologists; it includes many days working away, often in what feels like the middle of nowhere. There is pressure to come up with a new idea, whilst worrying whether someone else has done it already. Then there are the days of intense lab work; gazing into a microscope or waiting for hours as you run a gel. And finally, there are the days of sitting alone at a computer writing it up and criticizing every sentence. Throughout this process, there may be moments when you doubt your ideas or your methods and whether your research is relevant or interesting.

Sharing the gift of interesting research with fellow lab members.

But science doesn’t have to be like that! As it turns out, you don’t have to do everything yourself. And that project you were getting stuck on and losing interest in? A colleague may be able to provide you with feedback so that it makes sense again and the excitement returns. Other people can bring in a new insight that can be refreshing and ignite something new. Collaboration often results in great discoveries and a better outcome with more thought going into the project. Listening to people give talks about their research for a whole day may be exhausting, but never did it get boring. It is reassuring to know how other people are doing and to know that you are in the right place with the right people. This is where your research belongs.

A long hike meant we could get up close and personal to the Game Pass Shelter, which has some of the best San art recorded.

These research days were held in a pristine nature reserve that fell in the Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site. With stunning mountains, plant and wild life, we enjoyed our usual activities; this time with the company of others enjoying it with us – looking for orchids; stopping to watch jackals; spending hours attempting to photograph a plant-pollinator interaction; swimming; and hiking. And perhaps unusually for many of us – getting to see some of the best examples of San art! With the help of a guide, we did the long walk up the mountain and peered at the stone, listening to how much meaning these ancient drawings held.

Perhaps the San people who had originally applied a paint-like applicant to the stone would not think of themselves this way, but scientists perhaps they were. Every image is an explanation for how they thought the world worked; every animal showing exquisite detail required when determining the world around. And who could not be a scientist when standing on the top of a Drakensberg mountain? As scientists, our lab members attempt to make sense of the world around us too. And every time we go out, there are more questions to be found and more research to be done and always more talking about it.

 

Text: Hannah Butler.

Photos: Miguel Castañeda Zárate; Carolina Diller.

New Article in Ecology

A Drakensberg Crag Lizard (Pseudocordylis subviridis) licking nectar from the “Hidden Flowers” of Guthriea capensis in a terrarium (photo: Ruth Cozien & Steve Johnson.)

Most of the almost 90% of flowering plants that rely on animals such as bees and butterflies for pollination, use bright colourful floral displays to attract their pollinators. The flowers of Guthriea capensis, the “Hidden Flower”, however, are just what their common name implies: hidden at ground level, beneath the leaves of the plant and inconspicuous because, like the leaves, they are green. The flowers are, however, filled with nectar and strongly scented, which suggests that some animal does manage to find and pollinate the “Hidden Flowers”- but what is it?

The answer to this puzzle was recently published in Ecology by researchers from South Africa and the Netherlands, based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Afromontane Research Unit at the University of the Free State. In a population of “Hidden Flowers” in the Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site in South Africa, after many fruitless hours of human observations, cameras triggered by motion-detectors finally revealed the identity of a shy and highly surprising pollinator: Drakensberg Crag Lizards, which pick up pollen on their snouts when they visit the flowers to lap nectar. When lizards were experimentally excluded from plants, the number of seeds produced dropped dramatically, by almost 95% percent. Although flower visitation by lizards is not unknown, it occurs almost exclusively on oceanic islands, and the critical role of lizards for reproduction in Guthriea capensis is virtually unprecedented.

Just how lizards find the “Hidden Flowers” is the next riddle to be solved. Most lizards are insectivorous but, especially in the harsh environments of islands and deserts, and, as this new finding suggests, high mountains, they may develop a sweet tooth and supplement their insect diets with sips of nectar. Lizards can locate food using only odour, and a chemical analysis of the scent produced by the “Hidden Flowers” identified compounds which are almost unique in the plant kingdom. It seems likely that these extraordinary scent chemicals are key to attracting the lizard pollinators. Intriguingly, at close range, small orange glands are visible at the base of the inside of the flowers, and these glands bear a striking resemblance to the orange colour that male lizards develop in mating season to attract females. This similarity suggests that flowers may be using a colour that the reptiles recognise to enable them to locate the nectar.

However these lizards find their nectar treats, this study shows that, as indisputably important as insects such as honey bees are for pollination, there are still many unknown and surprising interactions that also need to be conserved if we want to ensure that plants like the mysterious “Hidden Flower” will continue to receive the visits from the little dragons with a sweet tooth that are critical for the production of seeds for another generation.

Cozien RJ, Van der Niet T, Johnson SD, Steenhuisen S-L. Saurian surprise: lizards pollinate South Africa’s enigmatic Hidden Flower. Ecology. Doi: 10.1002/ecy.2670.

Conferences in 2018

In 2018 and early 2019, many of our lab members participated in conferences all around the world. They went to exciting places and met interesting people. And beside just the fun of conferences, they presented their research; much of it relating back to this lab and the work we do.

Professor Steve Johnson‘s talk at the 2nd international symposium in memory of Stefan Vogel.

On the 24th and 25th of November, Miguel Castañeda Zárate attended and presented at the 2nd international symposium in memory of Stefan Vogel. This is what he had to say about his experience:

“In November 2018 I had the opportunity to attend the 2nd International Symposium in Memory of Stefan Vogel which took place at the University of Zürich. Over a couple of days, 25 very exciting talks on different topics related to the evolution and ecology of flowers were presented by a bunch of people from different corners of the world.

Two people from our group shared recent studies developed at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Our lab’s research leader, Professor Steve Johnson, presented pollination syndromes seen from a niche perspective beginning with some relevant background followed by different examples of studies carried out by different colleagues in our lab.

Miguel Castañeda Zárate presenting his talk on Satyrium longicauda in Zurich.

I personally gave a talk on the transition of different pollination systems in Satyrium longicauda, a common orchid that occurs in South African grasslands. For twenty minutes full of excitement and nervousness I showed evidence of the current pollinator transition that is occurring in the species. Specifically, the pollinator shift from moth to oil-gathering bee that is being triggered by a change in the floral reward offered by this orchid.

It was a gratifying experience because I received important feedback and some advice from renowned researchers in the fields of ecology and chemical ecology and suggestions from enthusiastic students with similar interests to improve my study.”

On the 25th to the 30th of November 2018, the 9th international congress of dipterology was held in Windhoek, Namibia. Three of our lab members, Dr Timo van der Niet, Genevieve Theron, and Annemarie Heiduk attended and presented some of their research relating to the (surprisingly) fascinating world of flies and their role as pollinators.

Dr Timo van der Niet‘s talk was entitled; Matching tubes and tongues: Local coevolution or ancient species sorting? He evaluated evidence for two opposing processes that can explain the pattern of population-level matching of tongues and tubes of a Nemestrinid fly species (Prosoeca ganglbaueri, distributed in the mountains of the summer-rainfall region of South Africa) and the various plant species it pollinates. Previously this pattern was interpreted as consistent with local co-evolution, but DNA sequence data from the mitochondrial and nuclear genome seem to imply that while co-evolution may have occurred to some extent during the history of these taxa, one-sided evolution or species sorting may be a more appropriate process to explain trait matching.

Genevieve Theron talked about identifying lineages in the hyper-variable keystone pollinator Proseca peringueya from the Succulent Karoo biodiversity hotspot.

Genevieve Theron‘s talk at the international congress of dipterology.

Annemarie Heiduk’s talk was entitled; Diptera: Drivers of diversification in Stapeliinae. She discusess her experience of the conference below:

“Flies are generally of ill fame and are associated with negative things, such as diseases, rotting stuff, and faeces. Nevertheless, there are people on this planet who have a deep passion and, with an affectionate look in their eyes, call flies “gems on two wings”. Once every four years these people with an extraordinary fondness of Diptera aggregate at a specific location and discuss how and why flies aggregate at specific locations.

My research focuses on plants that exploit flies as pollinators using “creep city tricks” to lure them to their flowers, and almost each species deceives a specific group of flies. Thus, my research depends on people who can identify them and tell me more about their biology. The ICD is the the stage to jump on and present my research to fly lovers from all around the globe. This conference covers all thinkable perspectives to look at flies: taxonomy, phylogeny, evolution, behavior, pheromones, flies in abmer, flies in chambers, flies in and on dead bodies, and of course flies in and on flowers.

I attended the ICD8 in 2014 and back then I connected to international fly experts with whom I have since successfully collaborated. I met with a bunch of them again this time and also connected to several others who approached me after my talk with great interest in my study. Finally, after six days of vivid fly focused discussions and six nights of Cider powered ideas for future projects I went back to PMB to enjoy a great season of field work even more driven than before. See you next time: 2022 at ICD10 in California!”

Speakers at the Wild Orchids of Southern Africa 4th Conference 2019. 
Rear row left to right: Prof Craig Peter, Richard Braby, Gerrit van Ede, Prof Steve Johnson , Andrew Hankey, Marinus Kort (Audiovisual), Dr Peter Ashton, Martin Rautenbach, Erhard Schmid, Enone Pauck (Organiser), Dr Tanay Bose, Karsten Wodrich (President). Front row left to right: Christo Page (Session Chairman), Jim Holmes, Jimmy Pauck (Organiser), Modjadji Makwela, Prof Joanna Dames, Dean Phillips.

Professor Steve Johnson and Dean Phillips represented the lab at the fourth Wild Orchids of Southern Africa Conference, which was held at the Gooderson Drakensberg Gardens Hotel from 25th to the 27th January 2019.

Professor Steve Johnson gave an enlightening talk about the reproductive strategies with emphasis on the pollination biology of our indigenous orchids, whilst Dean Phillips presented his much anticipated phylogenetic and morphologic studies on the genus Stenoglottis, culminating in a taxonomic proposal for the systematic revision of the genus. His research was fresh off the press under supervision of Professor Benny Bytebier and a formal publication of the results is currently in preparation.

Former lab member, Professor Craig Peter, presented a talk about the synthesis of the threats to and conservation status of South African orchids. Craig explained the red list classification of orchids and then using OrchidMap and herbarium data, he extracted various traits, classifications and distributions from the data relating to the threats facing the various groups.

 

Text: Hannah Butler (unless otherwise stated).