The popular magazine, ‘Veld & Flora’, run by the Botanical Society of South Africa, recently published an article on the work of our lab members, Isabel Johnson and Carolina Diller, on conserving the Hilton daisy (Gerbera aurantiaca).
This endangered daisy species is under enormous threat in its wild populations due to urban development, commercial plantations and sugar cane fields. It is only found in 30 small habitats. Unable to self-fertilize, this species relies on clonal reproduction and its monkey beetle pollinators for reproduction.
The daisy shows a considerable variation in colour, with the northern individuals mixed, the middle yellow, and the southern red. Unravelling what drives flower colour variation in Hilton daisies is one of Isabel’s main research questions.
They started with extensive DNA paternity tests on a vast number of individual plants from the study site. They also recorded the flower colour of each parent in the crossing experiment to know whether some flower colours are more successful at producing seeds than others because pollinators prefer them and whether offspring are produced by similarly coloured parents or dissimilar.
Article URL: https://botanicalsociety.org.za/colour-them-beautiful/
Pollination Research Lab 