Beehive ginger, Zingiber spectabile
Cohort 4 arrived at Las Cruces Biological Station this afternoon to begin our paired research projects, which we will be working on for the remaining two weeks of this program. Earlier in the program, everyone individually presented a topic they felt interested in and one that should be explored further at Las Cruces. We were then subsequently paired up with a person whose environmental interests paralleled our own in some way or another.
In my first blog post I wrote about the topic that my research proposal was on: the invasive beehive ginger plant, Zingiber spectabile. I wrote about the detrimental effects this plant, and invasive plants in general, can have on the native ecosystem and why controlling for invasive plants like this one is so important. My partner’s topic was on lichen diversity (see An Unexpected Interest blog post) and their relationship to certain tree species found in the rainforest. At first glance, our two topics seemed to have no correlation. How were we going to blend lichens, who are enigmas in themselves (are they algae, are they bacteria?), with the invasive ginger, who does not have any known lichen association? After further discussing each of our topics and species with one another, we decided lichen and ginger may be bioindicators, which are defined as any organism that can give an idea to how healthy an ecosystem is. Therefore, we came up with an idea to survey each of these species around three different habitat types at Las Cruces and use that information as a novel, and fairly efficient, way to assess overall rainforest health.
To do our surveys, we will be noting each ginger plant that is present within our 100m x 10m transect. We will measure the temperature, humidity, number of inflorescences (flowers), and canopy cover in each spot where the ginger is present. Also along the same transects, we will identify a tree species that has a high amount lichen present on the bark. We have not yet decided what the specific tree species will be, as we were unfamiliar with Las Cruces’ tree makeup and wanted to wait until we got here to decide on our tree species. In any case, along each transect where we surveyed ginger plants, we will also note where that TBD tree species is, the temperature, humidity, percent coverage of lichen on the bark, general type of lichen (there are four general types), canopy cover, and tree DBH (diameter at breast height). We are taking all of these measurements as they all hold some kind of indication of forest health and function. For example, counting the number of inflorescences on the ginger will indicate it’s overall reproductive fitness and suggests how high their dispersal rate is. Additionally, the DBH, diversity, and percent coverage of lichens on trees suggest forest age and overall stability.
Given that our three different forest types basically range from least to most disturbed, we are expecting to see the most invasive ginger plants within those areas that have more recently been disturbed. Furthermore, lichen diversity and overall percent coverage should be least in that recently disturbed forest and should be greatest in the oldest habitat. If our data are conclusive, our methods could potentially be used in other forest types that are dealing with controlling invasive plants to identify those areas of the forest that are most and least susceptible to invasion. Thus, management efforts could then be focused on those areas that need it the most.