The Plant Press

New Bellardiochloa Species Discovered in Turkey

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, June 2015.

Bellardiochloa doganiana

A new species of Bellardiochloa (Poaceae) was first discovered not on the rocky steppes of Turkey where it grows, but in a forgotten herbarium mount. Before the discovery, Bellardiochloa featured four alpine species, all occurring in Turkey, including two endemic species. Bellardiochloa doganiana, the newest member of this genus, was first recognized as distinct by Robert Soreng on a sheet at Herbarium Turcicum (ANK) at the Ankara University in 1991. The two flowering shoots, mounted along with an Eremopoa persica ([Trin.] Roshev. in Komarov 1934: 756) (=Poa persica Trin.), was annotated as “Bellardiochloa”. In 2014, Soreng returned to Turkey, and with Evren Cabi (Namık Kemal University), and Burçin Çingay (Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Garden), revisited ANK and established that the specimen was indeed a new species. To support the discovery, they traveled to the Palaz Dağları to collect additional samples to check for variation and collect a suitable type. Ersin Karabacak (Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University) illustrated the new species.

Bellardiochloa doganiana Cabi & Soreng was named in honor of Prof. Dr. Musa Doğan, a Turkish botanist responsible for extensive contributions to the knowledge of Turkey’s flora, especially of grasses. It is endemic to the Palaz Dağları (range) of the Taurus Mountains, in southwestern Turkey, growing on high steppe to low subalpine rocky areas between 2,000 and 2,300 meters. This species differs from all other Bellardiochloa species by its short, rigid, sharply tipped basal leaf-blades, and sparsely flowered panicles. The discovery was published in April in Phytotaxa 205(2): 123-128.

A Fresh Look at Forage Grasses Reveals New Discoveries

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

In a recent publication in the Journal of Systematics and Evolution, Paul Peterson, Konstantin Romaschenko, and Yolanda Herrera Arrieta revealed a new phylogenetic tree for Bouteloua (Poaceae: Chloridoideae: Cynodonteae; Boutelouinae), a genus of forage grasses found in the Americas. Bouteloua is made up of 60 species with a center of diversity in northern Mexico.

Yolanda Herrera Arrieta (photo taken by P.M. Peterson, Oct 2000) and Bouteloua herrera-arrieta P.M. Peterson & Romasch. A. Habit. B. Inflorescence branch. C. Upper glume. D. Florets. Drawn by Alice Tangerini.

The new phylogenetic tree was constructed via genetic analysis of 209 samples, including 59 species (206 individuals) in Bouteloua. Using a combination of two plastid spacers and nuclear ITS (ribosomal internal transcribed spacer), the researchers were able to produce a tree that supported a previous phylogeny but is better resolved with strong support for 11 clades. The resultant new subgeneric classification of the species of Bouteloua includes 10 sections and two subsections. Incongruence between the plastid and nuclear phylogenies suggest at least two ancient hybridizations which will require further study.

Based on the new phylogeny and unique morphological characteristics, Peterson’s group described a new species: Bouteloua herrera-arrietae. The new species is known only from the Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico where it occurs on calcareous rocky hills. It is named for Dr. Yolanda Herrera Arrieta, a coauthor who has completed a revision of Bouteloua and floristic studies on grasses in Chihuahua, Durango, Mexico, and Zacatecas.

A Celebration of Pollinators and Plants

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

Visitors at the Pollination Party in the butterfly garden learn from University of Maryland students about the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly and the native bee protection survey. (photo by Elizabeth Jacobsen)

National Pollinator Week 2015 was celebrated June 15-21 in an effort to raise awareness of the decline in important pollinator populations. The National Museum of Natural History held a number of events throughout the week, including a Pollination Party in the Butterfly Habitat Garden, “Expert is In!” programs throughout the museum, and a Bumble Bee Blitz in Q?rius to transcribe bumble bee records. Many of the events moved beyond simply raising awareness, giving participants opportunities to contribute towards pollinator protection.

Smithsonian Gardens volunteer Loretta showing a tobacco hornworm to a visitor. (photo by James Gagliardi)

The Pollination Party, held on June 16 in the Butterfly Habitat Garden, brought attention to native bees and butterflies. Partnering with the PollinaTerps from the University of Maryland, university students hosted a variety of activities, including quizzes, crafts, and the chance to take home seeds to start local urban butterfly habitats. The party also offered a history of beekeeping by graduate students from American University, posters featuring fun facts about pollinators, and meet and greet with a tobacco hornworm caterpillar from the Smithsonian Insect Zoo. The PollinaTerps current project focuses on restoring habitat for the imperiled Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, Euphydryas phaeton, the official state insect of Maryland.

Food for Thought: DNA Metabarcoding Illustrates Dietary Niche Partitioning in Large Herbivores

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

Herbivores can coexist even in the face of limited resources by consuming different plants than their neighbors. This dietary niche partitioning eases competition between large herbivores that share a geographical space. Previous hypotheses for dietary niche partitioning proposed a “grazer-browser continuum,” suggesting a separation of plant types consumed. Additional hypotheses pointed to body size, morphology, digestive strategy (whether a species is ruminant or non-ruminant), or spatiotemporal partitioning to explain the coexistence. In a recent publication for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, David Erickson, W. John Kress, and Maria Kuzmina with colleagues from Princeton University and the Mpala Research Center in Kenya used DNA metabarcoding to explore the breadth, composition, and overlap of large mammalian herbivore (LMH) diet at the plant species level.

Bipartite networks depicting diet composition and overlap of grazers (Left) and nongrazers (Right). Lines connect animal species (outer boxes) to dietary plant sequences (inner boxes), which are colored by plant family. From Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 2015 112(26): 8019-8024.

The group analyzed fecal samples from seven African species ranging from grazers to browsers, including a range of body sizes and digestion types. They found that dietary overlap was greatest in herbivores of similar body size and position on the grazer-browser spectrum, but that actual diet composition differed between all species—grazers were eating similar total amounts of grass but different grass species. These results support previous explanations, but also suggest a greater link between plant diversity and LMH diversity than has been recognized. DNA metabarcoding had not previously been applied to this type of study. Even so, it proved to be more effective than traditional methods of direct observation or microhistology (identifying plant parts visually from feces samples), offering a non-invasive but comprehensive technique to identify and quantify diet. 

Interns Get a Glimpse of the Plant ID Process

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

Interns from throughout the Smithsonian listen as Melinda Peters explains how to use a guide to identify a plant based on a specimen. The interns then had a chance to try out the techniques themselves. (photo by Rusty Russell)

In early June, as part of a National Museum of Natural History Intern event with the Office of Academic Services, interns from across the Smithsonian joined Melinda Peters to learn about plant identification using herbarium specimens collected in the western United States. Peters began with a description of the important features to notice about a plant in order to make an identification. She explained leaf structure, how to recognize a compound leaf, and floral shapes and structures. Interns then had the opportunity to identify the mounted specimens in front of them, leafing through stacks of books—what Peters described as the plant equivalent of “Choose your own Adventure” books.

Peters pointed out some of the difficulties in making plant identifications based only on pressed specimens. Collected specimens capture merely a snapshot of the plant’s life cycle through the year, and therefore can only give information about a certain time and place. Mounted specimens lose some of their original color, and so may not appear as they do in life. Finally, the pressed specimens cannot capture the three-dimensionality of the plant. Peters described how some specimens, such as orchids, are often preserved in alcohol to overcome this difficulty.

By the end of the session, interns had a much clearer idea of the effort that must go into species identification and how it feels to work with herbarium specimens.

Preserving Plant Genomic Diversity

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

By Vicki Funk
-Adapted from Natural History Unearthed

Vicki Funk (right) leads a team of collectors, including two Smithsonian undergraduate interns from the University of Delaware, Kristen Van Neste (second from left) and Sarah Gabler, for the Global Genome Initiative-Gardens project. (photo by U.S. Botanic Garden)

Did you know that half of the families of flowering plants, conifers, and ferns can be found in the Washington D.C., area? Did you know that you can see plants that are from an African desert environment, the hardened surface of a cooled Hawaiian lava flow, and a tropical rain forest, all within a few feet of each other in the nation’s capital?

It’s true and it is all free for you to enjoy right now at the U.S. Botanic Garden. We’re working with our partners at the Botanic Garden to gather a diverse array of plants. This summer marks the beginning of a collecting program called Global Genome Initiative-Gardens. It is part of the National Museum of Natural History’s Global Genome Initiative. The goal of this new collecting program is to sample the global genomic diversity of plants for preservation in the world’s biorepositories. Through partnerships with Smithsonian Gardens, the U.S. Botanic Garden and the U.S. National Arboretum, we will preserve samples of half the families of living plants around the world by the end of summer 2015.

Over the next two years, through growing partnerships with other botanical gardens, we hope to preserve samples of half the genera of living plants!

Each day, our team travels to one of the partner gardens or their production facilities and collects 20-30 plants in three ways: a pressed specimen to serve as a permanent voucher that will be stored in the museum’s U.S. National Herbarium; tissue dried in silica gel; and liquid nitrogen preserved at the Smithsonian’s biorepository at the Museum Support Center (MSC) in Suitland, Maryland.

Awards & Grants

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

At the Washington Academy of Sciences’ annual awards banquet, Paul Peterson received the 2015 award for Outstanding Scientist in Biological Sciences in the greater Washington D.C. area. The certificate reads, “In recognition of being a tireless and prolific taxonomist, collector, and publisher, who has extensively revised the classification of the large grass subfamily Chloridoideae and its genera, and for leading the effort to prepare a DNA database for the grasses of North America and noxious weeds for the Bar Code of Life.”

The Award for Outstanding Scientist in Biological Sciences was presented to Paul Peterson by Chris Puttock (right). (photo by Al Teich)

 

 

New Faces

From Plant Press, Vol. 18, No. 3, July 2015.

In early June, Eduardo Pasini, a Ph.D student at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, returned home after spending 10 months in the USA, including nine months in the Smithsonian’s Department of Botany and the Laboratory of Analytical Biology, and one month at the University of Memphis. While in Washington, D.C., Pasini studied with Vicki Funk and focused on his doctoral thesis: Understanding the evolutionary processes that led to the diversification and current distribution of the South American genus of Compositae (Asteraceae), Trichocline. This genus has approximately 24 species, distributed mainly in the Andes and Southern Brazil. All of the species are perennial herbs with a monocephalic scape presenting beautiful and conspicuous ray florets, generally yellow, red or white. Several species are endemic and occur in fragile ecosystems, like lowland grasslands or tropical highland grasslands.

Pasini traveled to the Smithsonian with the assistance of a Brazilian scholarship provided by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Técnico (Capes). He amplified and sequenced nuclear and plastid markers of the species of Trichocline that he had been collecting for almost four years as well as a number of outgroup samples stored in freezers at the US National Herbarium. After the lab work he was able to analyze the data in order to generate a molecular phylogeny of the genus. He also revised the material of Trichocline deposited in the herbarium. Pasini was able to get a one-month extension to stay long enough to travel to the University of Memphis where he studied Next Generation Sequencing techniques with Dr. Jennifer Mandell paid for by a Smithsonian grant awarded to Funk.

Caroline Puente joined the Department of Botany in April 2015 under W. John Kress. She completed her Ph.D. at James Cook University, Cairns, Australia, in collaboration with the Australian Tropical Herbarium, where she worked as an assistant curator. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the systematics and biogeography of the Australian Ericaceae (Epacrids). At the Smithsonian she is managing the Plant DNA Barcode Project, and is involved in several studies that use DNA barcodes to identify plant species, estimate phylogenetic biodiversity, and study the impacts of climate change at the community level.