Not every research program that takes place in the Thain Family Forest is geared explicitly toward the trees, though the work done there does tend to knit together at the end of the day. Think of it as a domino effect; an influence on one organism can herald a drastic fallout for others in the web of an individual biome. And, in some cases, certain varieties of plants or animals are relied on as indicator species—”canaries in the coal mine” that speak to the overall health of a given area, signifying changes for better or worse that might otherwise be too subtle to recognize. Salamanders, wherever they’re found, are often a flagship example.
In recent years, a handful of studies here have focused on the small salamander species that call our Forest home: the northern two-lined salamander (Eurycea bislineata), a water-reliant species native to the U.S. and Canada, and the terrestrial redback or woodland salamander (Plethodon cinereus), a species that has evolved to live away from water. Considering how delicate these quick, slippery little amphibians are on average, it’s quite the feat to strike off and make a living under rocks and leaf litter. Of course, even a particular resilience among their own kind doesn’t excuse them from the effects of climate, urbanization, and other challenges.
High in the cloud forests of the tropical Andes, picking her way through the misted foliage of Las Orquídeas National Park, NYBG botanist Paola Pedraza, Ph.D. goes about the business of collecting plant specimens. This northwest Colombian landscape is renowned for its biodiversity—it is said to have more examples of plant, animal, and microbial life than almost any other ecosystem on earth. But that’s not necessarily the only reason that Dr. Pedraza, a Colombian native and Associate Curator of our Institute of Systematic Botany, returns here so often. While her work is indeed groundbreaking, her motivations extend well beyond the everyday specimen collections that take place day and night here in South America.
Far from the mere process of cataloging plant life, it is the shrinking timeframe and the aggravating factors surrounding it that make Dr. Pedraza’s undertaking so significant.
Andrew Henderson, Ph.D., is the Abess Curator of Palms in the Institute of Systematic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden. His current research project concerns the systematics and conservation of the economically important rattan palms of southeast Asia.
Rattan baskets made from Calamus salicifolius
This past February I returned from my second trip to Laos and Cambodia as part of our project Strengthening Sustainable Rattan Market and Industry in Mekong Region, funded by the World Wildlife Fund. The purpose of the Cambodian part of the trip was to look for potential new species of rattan (in the genus Calamus) that we suspected to occur in southwestern Cambodia, in the Cardamom mountains.
Myself and the whole of the local WWF rattan team (Khou Eang Hourt, Chey Koulang, Ou Ratanak, and Prak Ousopha), as well as the Vietnamese director, Mr. Tam Le Viet, left Phnom Penh on Sunday, February 3, and drove almost clear across the country to Pailing, near the border with Thailand. Most of the way was through the floodplain of the Great Lake, but even there we found a species of rattan, Calamus salicifolius, growing along the margins of rice fields and sometimes right next to the road.
This part of Cambodia, near Pailing, was one of the last strongholds of Pol Pot and his followers, and the area was heavily mined in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Many of the explosives are still there and it’s somewhat disconcerting to walk through areas with warnings about land mines. Our local guides didn’t seem to care, but I was careful to try and follow in their footsteps!
You’ll find them clinging to rock faces like flecks of gray paint, or carpeting a tree trunk with skeins of red whisps. Lichens come in myriad shapes, sizes, colors, and consistencies. But while they’re often overlooked during your average hike, they’re worth giving a spare glance the next time you’re outdoors–lichens play an important part in the ecosystem. Few know this so well as the NYBG‘s Dr. James Lendemer. Like many of the Garden’s globetrotting scientists–Michael Balick, Bill Buck, and Roy Halling, to name a few–Lendemer’s field odysseys carry him well beyond the laboratory door in his hunt for specimens. In recent years, that chalks up to long days spent trekking through the Great Smoky Mountains of the eastern United States.
For the uninitiated, lichens are cryptogams–fungi that reproduce by spores, as with other fungi and some groups of plants. But unlike either, lichens are unique in that they’re composite organisms, often a symbiotic combination of fungi and algae. Think of them as codependent roommates; the former acts as a sort of bodyguard for the latter in exchange for nourishing sugars from the algae’s photosynthesis. At large, lichens make the perfect bird nests by some avian standards, and the growths also have a penchant for breaking down dead trees and rocks while providing nitrogen for soil. Unassuming as they are, they’re integral to maintaining healthy biomes.
Not every research program that takes place in the Thain Family Forest is geared explicitly toward the trees, though the work done there does tend to knit together at the end of the day. Think of it as a domino effect; an influence on one organism can herald a drastic fallout for others in the web of an individual biome. And, in some cases, certain varieties of plants or animals are relied on as indicator species—”canaries in the coal mine” that speak to the overall health of a given area, signifying changes for better or worse that might otherwise be too subtle to recognize. Salamanders, wherever they’re found, are often a flagship example.
