Research using WOW data. By Samantha Bywaters
All around the world wild orchids are disappearing from their natural habitat. The factors contributing to their loss include weed invasion, loss of habitat, changed fire regimes and climate change (1).
What we don’t know enough about is how Australian orchids are being affected by these pressures and the best ways to help them. What is needed to solve this problem is real time data on orchid distribution and information about the timing of their life cycles. With around 1700 orchid species occurring in Australia (2), there are a lot of variables to consider. We simply don’t have the work force needed to collect data about all orchid species right across Australia, but what we do have is an army of everyday people, citizen scientists, who love bush walking and taking pictures of orchids. If we are able to harness the power of citizen scientists to build up a data set about when and where orchids are flowering and the pressures they are facing this would be a great start. And that is where the Wild Orchid Watch app can play an important part in helping to save Australian wild orchids.
Understanding the annual timing of orchid life cycle events such as leaf and flower emergence is key to meeting their conservation needs. If we know when orchids are flowering or setting seed, we will know when to carry out hazard reduction burns in National Parks. If we know where orchids are occurring across the landscape, we will know that management plans are needed for their care. And if we know that orchids and their insect pollinators are getting out of sync due to climate change, we will know what intervention measures are needed.
As a post-graduate research student, I will compare orchid sightings gathered using the WOW app and then compare this to historic orchid data held in museums and herbaria. By overlapping, or integrating the various data sources, I will be able to tell if there has been a shift in orchid flowering times since the earliest records were kept. Scientists in the UK have recently published work on integrating 356 years of orchid data and have found that at least one orchid species has become “uncoupled” from it’s insect pollinator, and this has drastic implications for the survival of this orchid species (3).
Whilst it is known that orchid numbers are decreasing world-wide, it is also known that it is possible to bring back orchids from the brink of extinction (4). If the orchid lovers of Australia want to be part of this survival mission, their help in gathering data via the Wild Orchid Watch app will be absolutely critical.
1. Wraith, J. and Pickering, C. (2019) A continental scale analysis of threats to orchids. Biological Conservation 234: 7-17
2. Nauheimer, L., Schley, R.J., Clements, M.A., Micheneau, C. and Nargar, K., (2018) Australasian orchid biogeography at continental scale: molecular phylogenetic insights from the sun orchids (Thelymitra, Orchidaceae). Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 127, pp.304-319
3. Hutchings, M.J., Robbirt, K.M., Roberts, D.L. and Davy, A.J., 2018. Vulnerability of a specialized pollination mechanism to climate change revealed by a 356-year analysis. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 186 (4), pp.498-509.
4. Swarts, N. and Dixon, K. (2017) Conservation Methods for Terrestrial Orchids, J. Ross Publishing, United States.