Tag: Hawaii

Botany from above: drone discovers new plant species in Hawaii

The carnation is the first plant identified and collected using drone technology.

A new-to-science carnation species from Hawaii is likely the first plant to be identified and collected using drone technology.

Check out the video below to see how it happened!

Video by Ben Nyberg.

Published in the open-access journal PhytoKeys, the discovery was facilitated by the National Tropical Botanical Garden‘s (NTBG) botanical drone program, which deploys unmanned aircraft to explore remote cliff environments.

Via drone photography, researchers spotted Schiedea waiahuluensis growing on steep, inaccessible cliffs in the Waiahulu region of the island of Kauai. To gather samples, they suspended ‘the Mamba’ – a remote plant collection device – from a drone and used it to grab, cut, and collect the plant for study.

Plant-cutting drone attachment above forested mountains. — Collecting arm hanging from drone. Photo by Ben Nyberg.

The new species belongs to a well-studied Hawaiian lineage in the carnation family. Its genus, Schiedea, consists of 36 species spread across the Hawaiian Islands, with 12 species found only on Kauai.

Schiedea waiahuluensis grows only on the dry cliffs of Waiahulu, with an estimated population of around 345 individuals, primarily growing on bare rock surfaces in small pockets of soil.

Macro image of light-green flowers. — Flower of drone collected specimen. Photo by KR Wood.

Their fragile habitat is under threat from invasive plant species and feral goats, making conservation efforts crucial. Researchers are planning further studies to assess the full distribution and conservation needs of the species.

“S. waiahuluensis has a combination of traits that would have been very difficult to predict, and upended our notions about diversity in Schiedea, even after decades of research on this genus.”
Authors Stephen Weller and Ann Sakai from the University of California

Following more than 40 years of research on Schiedea on Kauai, this finding demonstrates the potential for future discoveries of native plants across the Hawaiian Islands through drone technology, and highlights the burgeoning role of drones in advancing conservation efforts and preventing plant extinctions.

Steep mountain landscape with a green plant growing out of rock cracks. — *Schiedea waiahuluensis* habitat. A) Waiahulu branch of Waimea Canyon, drone photo. B) non-collected individual, drone photo. Photos by Ben Nyberg.

“The new development of the NTBG drone program provides a major new tool in biodiversity research that has allowed for better assessment of species distribution and status as shown by drone missions on the inaccessible cliffs of the major canyons on Kauai.

It has revealed populations of species presumed extinct such as the recent rediscovery of Hibiscadelphus woodii, a relative of Hibiscus, mapped populations of Schiedea waiahuluensis, and collected seeds via drone for establishment of a conservation collection of this species.”
Lead author Warren Wagner, a research botanist at the Smithsonian Institution

While drone-technology innovators were not likely thinking about botany, Schiedea waiahuluensis serves as a reminder that science can benefit from technologic advancements from seemingly unrelated fields.

For another ‘miraculous’ discovery, read our blog on Amalophyllon miraculum, an incredible little plant from Ecuador!

¡Que Vive Centinela! A tiny new plant species reaffirms the “miraculous” survival of Western Ecuador’s ravished biodiversity

Original study:

Wagner WL, Weller SG, Sakai AK, Nyberg B, Wood KR (2024) Schiedea waiahuluensis (Caryophyllaceae), an enigmatic new species from Kaua’i, Hawaiian Islands and the first species discovered by a drone collection system. PhytoKeys 247: 111-121. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.247.130241

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New species of butterflyfish in the deep reefs of now Earth’s largest protected area Papahānaumokuākea

In the midst of the ongoing IUCN World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, scientists from Bishop Museum and NOAA published a description of a new species of butterflyfish from deep reefs of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which was recently expanded by President Barack Obama to become world’s largest protected area. The study is published in the open-access scientific journal ZooKeys.

“Butterflyfish are among the most conspicuous fishes on the reefs,” said Richard Pyle, Bishop Museum researcher and first author on the publication. “They are colorful, beautiful, and have been well-studied worldwide. Thus, finding a new species of butterflyfish is a rare event.”

RPyleCollectingHolotypeP.basabei — Author Dr Richard Pyle collecting an individual of the new butterflyfish P. basabei

Coral reefs at depths of 100 to 500 feet, also known as mesophotic coral ecosystems or the coral-reef “twilight zone,” are among the most poorly explored of all marine ecosystems. Deeper than scuba divers can safely venture, and shallower than most submersible-based exploration, these reefs represent a new frontier for coral-reef research.

“Discoveries such as this underscore how poorly explored our deep coral reefs are,” said Randall Kosaki, NOAA scientist and co-author of the study. “Virtually every deep dive reveals a reef that no human being has ever laid eyes on.” Pyle and Kosaki have pioneered the use of advanced mixed-gas diving systems known as rebreathers (because they recycle the diver’s breathing gas). Rebreathers allow deeper and longer dives, enabling new opportunities for exploring and documenting deep coral reef habitats throughout the world’s tropical seas.

The new butterflyfish was first seen in submersible video over twenty years ago, at depths exceeding 600 feet. At the time, Pyle and University of Hawai‘i marine biologist E.H. “Deetsie” Chave recognized it as a potential new species. However, because of the extreme depths, it was years before technical divers using rebreather technology were able to collect specimens for proper scientific documentation.

Using this technology, NOAA and Museum researchers have encountered the new butterflyfish regularly during deep exploratory dives up to 330 feet on NOAA expeditions to the Monument, where the specimens for the scientific description were collected

The new fish, Prognathodes basabei, is named after Pete Basabe, a veteran local diver from Kona, Hawai‘i who, over the years, has assisted with the collection of reef fishes for numerous scientific studies and educational displays. Basabe, an experienced deep diver himself, was instrumental in providing support for the dives that produced the first specimen of the fish that now bears his name.

The Holotype, the Author, the Publisher Author Dr Richard Pyle (left) with Pensoft's and ZooKeys' founder Prof Lyubomir Penev (right) with the new butterflyfish P. basabei — The Holotype, the Author, the Publisher
Author Dr Richard Pyle (left) and Pensoft’s and ZooKeys’ founder Prof Lyubomir Penev (right) with the new butterflyfish P. basabei

At the urging of Native Hawaiian leaders, conservationists, and many marine scientists, President Obama recently expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. At 582,578 square miles, Papahānaumokuākea is now the largest protected area on Earth.

“This new discovery illustrates the conservation value of very large marine protected areas,” said Kosaki. “Not only do they protect the biodiversity that we already know about, they also protect the diversity we’ve yet to discover. And there’s a lot left to discover.”

Original source:
Pyle RL, Kosaki RK (2016) Prognathodes basabei, a new species of butterflyfish (Perciformes, Chaetodontidae) from the Hawaiian Archipelago. ZooKeys 614: 137-152. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.614.10200

New species with heart-shaped fruits inspires a love for biodiversity in Hawai’i

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, botanists from Hawai’i have discovered a new species of plant with small heart-shaped fruits. The new species is a member of the coffee family (Rubiaceae) and part of the genus Coprosma, which occurs across many remote islands of the Pacific Ocean. They named the new Hawaiian species after the symbol of love – calling it Coprosma cordicarpa – meaning the Coprosma with heart-shaped fruit. Their research is published in the open-access journal PhytoKeys.

The botanists, who discovered C. cordicarpa, describe their finding as the result of a loving adventure with Hawaiian biodiversity. It began when Hawai’i’s State Botanist Dr. Maggie J. Sporck-Koehler noticed the little heart-shaped fruits in the Kanaio Natural Area Reserve on the Island of Maui, while attending a work meeting with the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW).

One of the primary mandates of DOFAW is to conserve Hawai’i’s native ecosystems and the species that reside in them. As State Botanist, Sporck-Koehler is most often working on issues relating to rare or State and Federally listed threatened and endangered (T&E) plant species. Gaining a better understanding of native Hawaiian plant conservation status and helping to facilitate conservation efforts is one of the main objectives of the work she does for the State. Therefore, when something extraordinary gets under her nose, such as an unusual Coprosmapopulation, she takes a note and a sample.

Sporck-Koehler attempted to identify the species using a key so that she could know what she was looking at. She got to Coprosma foliosa, but was not satisfied. So, she turned to Dr. Jason T. Cantley, who at the time was finishing his PhD research on the genus Coprosma at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Department of Botany. “I was very taken with it,” Sporck-Koehler told Cantley. “It seemed different than any other [Coprosma] foliosas I’ve seen.”

Then, Cantley concluded that the heart-shaped fruits and other characteristics looked different enough that it was worth it to visit specimens at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and then to examine the plants themselves. “We needed to get all our ducks in a row, making sure we knew what we were looking for before we flew to Maui,” Cantley says. “Part of that planning was to think about the long-term conservation of Coprosma cordicarpafrom the start. That’s one reason it was necessary to bring Dr. Chau into this project.”

Dr. Marian M. Chau is the Seed Conservation Laboratory Manager at Lyon Arboretum’s Hawaiian Rare Plant Program in Honolulu. The Seed Conservation Lab‘s mission is to aid in the prevention of extinction of Hawaiian plant species by maintaining a long-term seed bank collection, to propagate plants for use in approved restoration projects, and to conduct research on seed storage and germination for the Hawaiian flora. The Seed Conservation Lab currently stores over 11 million seeds from about 40% of all Hawaiian native species, with the ultimate goal to represent the entire flora with research and/or long-term germplasm collections. This includes under-described biodiversity, like the heart-shaped fruits of C. cordicarpa.

From early on, it was clear that C. cordicarpa was not all that common, as it can only be found on one island. In fact, the botanists determined the new species fell within the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red Vulnerable Category (VU) for extinction risk. The VU is the lowest of the three threatened Red List categories, but indicates that C. cordicarpastill faces threats of extinction in the wild. Chau suggested that they collect seeds for long-term germplasm storage at the Seed Conservation Lab.

Two field adventures on Maui and many herbarium specimen measurements later, the authors were confident they were looking at a new species. All in all, 609 seeds from 32 plants were collected, which are going to help preserve the biodiversity of this species for many years to come.

The authors had a passion for Hawaiian plant biodiversity and conservation well before this project, but it was the discovery of the heart-shaped fruits that brought these three botanists together. With their naming of this new species, they hope to also inspire others with a love for biodiversity that will continue long into the future.

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Original source:

Cantley JT, Sporck-Koehler MJ, Chau MM (2016) New and resurrected Hawaiian species of pilo (Coprosma, Rubiaceae) from the island of Maui. PhytoKeys 60: 33-48. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.60.6465

Lava attraction: 74 new beetle species found hiding in plain sight on a Hawaiian volcano

Confined to the limits of Haleakala volcano, Maui Island, Hawaii, the beetle fauna there turns out to be not only extremely diverse, but very abundant as well. When Prof. James Liebherr of the Cornell University Insect Collection thoroughly sampled beetle populations on the volcano, he identified 116 species of round-waisted predatory beetles, including 74 new to science. The taxonomic revision, complete with descriptions of the new species, is now published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

The present discoveries and observations are certainly surprising due to their scale, even though it has been long known that the Hawaiian Islands support disproportionately high levels of biodiversity. For this group of native round-waisted beetles, called Mecyclothorax in the zoological naming system, there are 239 species across the Hawaiian Islands, all of them descended from a single colonizing species.

The 116 species known from Haleakala make that volcano the center of biodiversity for this group within Hawaii. These beetles’ evolution during the 1.2-million-year lifespan of Haleakala volcano means they have speciated faster than most organisms on Earth, including the Hawaiian Drosophila and the cichlid fishes of eastern Africa.

No less striking is the fact that the 74 newly described beetle species previously evaded discovery within the limits of Haleakala’s 1,440 km2 of surface area. Reasons for this include the restricted distributions of many of the beetle species, and the previous lack of comprehensive field sampling. During his research, Prof. Liebherr examined all quarters of the mountain to eventually find many places of 1′ latitude × 1′ longitude where more than 20Mecyclothorax species lived closely together within a limited area of forest.

Most of these diverse microhabitats were discovered in windward rainforests. Moreover, different forest areas, geographically isolated from each other by volcanic lava flows, steep valleys, or extensive mudflows, supported different sets of species. “Haleakala volcano is a large pie with different sets of beetle species living in the different slices,” comments Prof. Liebherr. “Actually the different pie slices are just like the original Hawaiian land divisions called ahu pua’a, showing that the Hawaiian people had a keen sense for how their island home was organized.”

Additionally, the round-waisted beetle species seem to thrive across a wide range of altitudes, with their populations covering the major part of the mountain’s height. Historical as well as modern records have identified representatives of these insects from 450-metre elevation up to the volcano’s summit at 3000 m. However, given land conversion and the influx of alien invasive plants, habitats below about 1000 m have been seriously disrupted, and these elevations support few native beetles.

Looking to the future, Liebherr points out that “the substantial level of sympatry, associated with occupation of diverse microhabitats by these beetles, provides ample information useful for monitoring biodiversity of the natural areas of Haleakala.”

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Original source:

Liebherr JK (2015) The Mecyclothorax beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae, Moriomorphini) of Haleakala-, Maui: Keystone of a hyperdiverse Hawaiian radiation. ZooKeys 544: 1-407. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.544.6074

Sir Elton John is the inspiration behind the name of a new coral reef crustacean species

While exploring the remote coral reefs of Raja Ampat in Indonesia, Dr. James Thomas from the Halmos College of Natural Sciences and Oceanography, Florida, and his colleagues from Naturalis Natural History museum in the Netherlands, stumbled across a small but extraordinary crustacean living inside another reef invertebrate in a commensal association (without causing any harm, nor benefit to its host).

In his amazement to the amphipod’s unusual form, Dr. Thomas called it L. eltoni after musician and actor Sir Elton John. The research is available in the open access journal ZooKeys.

“I named the species in honour of Sir Elton John because I have listened to his music in my lab during my entire scientific career,” the lead author explains. “So, when this unusual crustacean with a greatly enlarged appendage appeared under my microscope after a day of collecting, an image of the shoes Elton John wore as the Pinball Wizard came to mind.”

Taxonomists, scientists who study and name new species, have the choice to pick names that are relevant to locations, features of the animal, or people the scientist admires.

In an interesting twist L. eltoni is now reported from Hawaiian waters as an invasive species. “Several years ago I was contacted by scientists from the Bishop Museum in Honolulu to help identify an unusual amphipod they had collected,” said Dr. Thomas. It proved to be the same species as the one from Indonesia. The most likely scenario for its introduction into Hawaiian waters was as a hitchhiker inside its host sponge or tunicate that was attached to a large floating drydock transported to Hawaii from Subic Bay, Philippines. Recent studies by Dr. Thomas in the Philippines during a California Academy of Science expedition in 2014 have shown this new species is also found there.

Marine animals can have unknown effects when transported to other ecosystems where they can compete with native species. In most cases these “invasions” go unnoticed. However, because scientists at the Bishop Museum had established a baseline of species over the years the presence of this invasive amphipod was quickly noted.

“Such studies show the importance of regular environmental monitoring, especially in tropical environments,” commented the scientist. He also pointed out that even though their tiny size, crustaceans such as L. eltoni provide crucial information about reef health.

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Original source

Thomas J. D. (2015) Leucothoe eltoni sp. n., a new species of commensal leucothoid amphipod from coral reefs in Raja Ampat, Indonesia (Crustacea, Amphipoda). ZooKeys 518: 51-66. doi: 10.3897/zookeys.518.9340