August 2017 News - Center for Plant Conservation

August 2017 Newsletter

What does cancer research and plant conservation have in common? Much if you think about how we approach life’s challenges today, in this technological, data-filled world.

Many of you will recall the announcement of the Cancer Moonshot in 2016, a federally-funded National Cancer Institute initiative to advance cancer research with the aim of making more therapies available to more patients and to possibly even prevent cancer from ever happening. This lofty goal is being made possible by incredible advances in genetics and our ever-increasing ability to analyze huge amounts of data, commonly referred to as big data. The individual nuances of cancer, and how and why it strikes, once were so overwhelming that only brute force, over-generalized methods such as radiation and chemotherapy were used for treatment, and often after the disease had progressed irreparably. But with current and near-future advances in detection and treatment, individually tailored efforts will ideally make cancer a thing of the past. This of course would be nothing short of revolutionary and with the Cancer Moonshot comes the great hope of a brighter tomorrow.

The challenge of saving plants from extinction is incredibly multifaceted and diverse, not unlike treating cancer. And like the promise that technology and big data bring to our efforts in beating this dreaded disease, similar approaches can be used to save plants from extinction. In this issue of Save Plants, you will learn how we at CPC are working towards a future where big data is used to identify conservation challenges and predict how best to solve them. From efforts to collect and freely share data on rare plants and their pollinators, to better methods for identify species at risk and targeting their recovery, CPC researchers and our partners are busy building the infrastructure and knowhow to save plants from extinction. And with our ever increasing ability to use genetics to understand, manage and protect plant populations – and even individual plants or seeds – CPC is there working with the world’s leading conservationists to ensure these tools are developed and used. As with cancer, the hope big data brings to plant conservation will be revolutionary in itself and yes, help us build a much brighter – and greener – tomorrow.

Read on to learn about some of these valiant efforts and to better understand how big “big data” is in our efforts to Save Plants.

What is Big Data and How Can We Use It To Save Plants

It seems that everywhere we are hearing the term “Big Data.” As the term implies, Big Data is comprised of sets of data, often complex with massive amounts of information. While these sets of data cover diverse areas such as business and social media, it is also valuable in the scientific world – there are multiple applications possible. The data collected holds value in its use for predictive analytics as well as scientific analysis. The key to all the possible applications is inter-connectivity between sources and integrating the data in a way that will allow algorithms to learn from the data as well as make predictions based on the data.

In order to conserve plants in North America, we will need to integrate approaches that allow more efficient use of limited resources. Big Data gives us the opportunity to pull together disparate information and research to more effectively approach the work of saving plants.

Photo of Erigeron rhizomatus (Rhizome Fleabane) by Daniela Roth, NNHP

Botanical Society of America Conference symposium “Big Data and the Conservation of North America’s Flora”

Earlier this summer, Dr. Joyce Maschinski, VP Conservation and Science at Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), attended the Botanical Society of America Conference in Ft. Worth, Texas and gave an oral presentation in the symposium “Big Data and Conservation of North America’s Flora” organized by Dr. Anne Frances, Lead Botanist from NatureServe and Peggy Olwell, National Plant Materials Program Lead from the Bureau of Land Management. The speakers in the symposium highlighted the need to integrate new approaches that would enable us to use limited resources in a more coordinated and efficient way to save plants. In order to conserve plant biodiversity in a holistic and comprehensive manner, academics, conservationists, and land managers will need to join forces. Familiar colleagues helped present a well-rounded symposium, including Alan Weakley, Wesley Knapp, George Gann, and Fred Edwards.

Dr. Maschinski spoke about the new approaches CPC is using to share information, from local to regional and national scale. To improve the speed and quality of data sharing among institutions, CPC has created online forms that automatically populate a cloud database – this database can be accessed by partners for state and national level analyses. Data kept by individual participating institutions to track accessions can collectively inform collection goals of the California Plant Rescue and Global Strategy for Plant Conservation and automatically inform the seedbank partners at the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation. A key component for all new initiatives will be to make the forms themselves useful at multiple scales so that data transfer is seamless and easily converted for analysis. This will leave more time for essential plant conservation.

Content provided by Dr. Joyce Maschinski. Photos: Marsilea villosa (`Hi `ihi) by Nellie Sugii and Abutilon menziesii (Ko’oloa ‘ula) by Waimea Arboretum

Adding to the Data on Pollinators

Content provided by Dr. Joyce Maschinski

Pollinator information about rare plants is now live on CPC website. Dr. Katie Heineman created a data sharing platform that displays pollinator information with linked references. Dr. Heineman, with the help of colleagues at San Diego Zoo Global and many volunteers, researched peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify pollinators of the rare plants in the CPC National Collection and their relatives. They created a matrix that shows the rare plant species, its pollinator group, pollinator name, the citation, and a link to the reference. They have identified pollinators associated with 1217 of the 1445 rare plants in our National Collection and/or their relatives. In total, the database encompasses 13324 records of plant-pollinator interactions for 2115 plant taxa and 2144 pollinators from 565 primary and secondary sources from the academic and grey literature. Information from the database can be easily searched by pollinator or plant common name or scientific names of family, genus, or species. Viewers can download all pollinator information from the website. CPC is excited to share this valuable resource about pollinators with our partners and the general public.

Photo by Daniela Roth, NNHP

FACTS ON COLLECTING POLLINATOR INFORMATION

Developed a database containing 13324 records of plant- pollinator interactions. This encompasses records for 2115 plant taxa and 2144 pollinators from 565 primary and secondary sources from the academic and grey literature. In total, the plant- pollinator observations encompass 758 plant genera from 166 families and 694 pollinator genera from 146 families.
Found pollinator records for 84% of the plant species currently in the CPC National Collection (1217 of 1445 plant species). There are 345 pollinator observations specific to plant species in the current CPC National Collection, plus 103 rare plant species with Global Rankings of G1 or G2 that are currently not in the national collection. Additional observations are for relatives of the rare species. There are several ways to view the information – either from visiting profiles of rare plants or from searches for pollinators.
Gathered information from peer-reviewed and gray literature with the help of staff and volunteers.
Linked references using the software Zotero™ allowing users to see full bibliographic citation. In the case of references that are not copyright protected, there are links that allow a user to view the original reference.
The information is available to the public and scientists to view or download.

A flexible approach for prioritizing rare taxa for ex situ collection

Content Provided by Ed Guerrant.

Ed Guerrant, PhD at Huntington Botanic Garden

Given their sheer numbers, it is necessary to prioritize rare taxa for ex situ collection. Prioritization is inherently a values-driven exercise, and, just as value judgements can reasonably differ between people, the perspective of who is doing the prioritizing matters as well.

Ed Guerrant, the director of Rae Selling Berry Seed Bank & Plant Conservation Program at Portland State University, has attempted to create a way that taxa can be prioritized using multiple criteria. With this process, the weight attributed to different criteria can be modified by the user.

The approach described here was specifically developed to assist the BLM strategically prioritize for ex situ seed collection the 636 taxa on the Oregon and Washington BLM Sensitive and Strategic Species (SSS) list. It builds on Farnsworth et al (2006. Biological Conservation 128:1-12) for the six New England States, which assigns numerical values to each of many variables, with the resulting order of ranking determined by the sum of all ranks. Those having the lowest total have the highest priority. It yields a single rank order list of priorities. The approach created by Guerrant relies on many of the same factors, but how these factors are treated differs in several significant ways.

First, in the New England approach, the relative weights of the different variables, while not explicit, vary greatly due to the differing range of values with which different variables are assigned. Those differences have a dramatic influence on the final scores and thus rank order.

In addition to whether a taxon can be stored ex situ, the basic variables considered here concern the geographic range, number of element occurrences in Oregon and Washington, the proportion of element occurrences for which ex situ samples exist, how many and what proportion of element occurrences occur on BLM lands, as well as legal status and other priority ranks (e.g. G-ranks.)

To ameliorate potential effects on relative weighting inherent in differing scales among variables, the priority value assigned to each variable were adjusted to a standard range of 0 to 10 for all variables in order to facilitate the explicit assignment of differing relative weights to different variables, should that be desired. This approach allows the effects of particular variables on the overall priority rank order to be determined. Ultimately, this approach represents a significant advance and has the potential to be a first step in the development of what could become an ongoing, updatable and flexible (database based) tool for prioritizing species for ex situ collection.

Photo by Sharon Stacey

Plant of the month:

Macfarlane’s Four-o’clock (Mirabilis macfarlanei)

This showy plant is quite something if you encounter it in the dry areas of Eastern Oregon and Western Idaho. Often growing on dry, steep slopes high above the river, this four-o’clock, with bright magenta flowers and purplish stems, stands out on the brownish hillsides. Mirabilis macfarlanei was listed as Endangered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1979. It was threatened by many things, including: trampling, grazing, disease, insect damage and horticultural collecting.

An initial recovery plan was created in 1985. It called for baseline studies, determination of population trends, and periodic sampling of populations. The species was downlisted to Threatened in 1996 due to the discovery of additional populations and successful recovery efforts. A revised recovery plan was finalized in 2000. The protection of Mirabilis macfarlanei is especially important because it is host to a rare moth that was discovered in 1983. This Heliodinid moth (Lithariapteryx sp.) is host specific to M. macfarlanei. The moth larvae only feeds on the leaves and flowers of Mirabilis macfarlanei (Baker 1985). In the interests of biodiversity, it is important to preserve both the rare moth and the rare four-o’clock. Because the moth’s feeding preferences have the capability of reducing reproduction of the four-o’clock, it is important to protect large numbers of plants. With larger numbers of plants, there will be a greater chance for plants to reproduce.

The species was named after Ed MacFarlane, who was a riverboat pilot on the Snake River for over 30 years. Ed MacFarlane did not discover the species. It was shown to him by Harold St. John, a botanist, on a trip up the Snake River. For unknown reasons, St. John did not publish his find. Later, Ed MacFarlane showed two other botanists, Lincoln Constance and Reed Rollins, the plant. They described the species and named it after the pilot (Pilz 1978 in Kaye and Meinke 1992).

Information from CPC Plant Profiles

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