Maphelane - Highlight of the day

Early morning inspection of lab by monkey

What a wonderful place to do sampling. The day was perfect and cool and the scientists started early to collect samples of species around the swampy forest, the estuary and the beach area.
When they returned to camp with their findings and experiences, the highlights of the day was shared and this is what they had to say:

Marieka the fungi expert says:
"Our new camp site is considerably wetter than the previous site.  So I shifted focus now in looking for the larger fungi, which are so much more visual and easier to understand.  It is still quite dry and I did not manage to find as many fungi as I know is here, but I can now add a few of these to the barcode database."

"This made me think of how incredibly useful bar-coding can be to South African mycology, which is in such great need for exploration and identification.  Where previously I went to places with numerous mushrooms and other types of fungi, I could not find time afterwards to make something with the fungi I collected. Now, I can actually do something more meaningful.  I can add the fungi I collected to the kits for DNA bar-coding, keep my herbarium and information, and send these fungi off to Canada to get them into a database and with a linked DNA sequence that can help in future to slot these fungi into place.  The most difficult thing for fungi is that they are so incredibly numerous, so undescribed and there are so few people to do something with them.  The vast majority of sequences we will thus get we cannot give names to. It will thus be like starting a library but where the books have no names and we first have to read them to add their information.  But with barcodes we can still sort these unnamed books, and it will show us if in future we find something similar.  And with the system of cataloging enforced by BOLD, we will have everything necessary if the expertise comes to give these fungi names.  This is thus an ideal way to DO SOMETHING, even if it is only exploring the tips of the tips of the tips of the icebergs.
The ideal would be if I could return to these places later in summer with the rainy season in full swing. Fungi are also seasonal, and occur at different times.  I know they are here, but need to come repeatedly to find them.  Would it not be cool if this would be possible…  This opportunity gave to me by this Toyota Enviro Outreach and the support of the various people, however, already helped me to do much.
Tally thus far:  I have about 130 samples thus far, ranging from various lichens (estimate about 30 species that must be characterized by a colleague in the USA), about 40 pathogens, about 400 additional fungi I will try to obtain for each pathogen sample, and about 25 larger fungi I found today.  I will add these c. 600 species to literally about a thousand different types of fungi I will delimit from the environmental bar-coding I will do with the samples of waterberry.  Only the tip….
Fungus find of the day:  Let’s choose the unknown delicate and elegant mushroom hiding underneath a log."

Christian from the insect team has the following to say;
"We found a coastal endemic dung beetle scarabaeus bornemiza – a clear indication that we are sampling in a pristine environment. My highlight of the day overshadowed the low point: I broke prof. Holm’s 'kettie'."

Bezeng said that it was a great day as he worked with different researchers from the African Center for DNA Bar-coding assisting in preparing the plants that were collected. Most importantly he had to collect a  Scaevola Plumieri with beautiful flowers and also his first collection from the Lobeliaceae family. Finally it was great for Bezeng talking to Prof Vincent Savolainen. He shared his research interest and that gave Bezeng an open mind into research.

Olivier from the plant team:
"Today we visited several very exciting places such as dense forest and a swamp. We found 2 interesting plant species:
The first observation was a Drypetes natalensis (Stem fruit from the Iron plum from the Euphorbe family). It bears flowers on the trunk and male and females flowers are appearing on separate specimens."

Male Stem Fruit

Female Stem fruit

The second observation was an Inhambanella henriquesii (or Milk Pear of the Milk pear family). This species has a localized distribution in South Africa and is a new species for our sampling of trees of Southern Africa.

Vincent, from the prestigious Imperial College in London, is our DNA analyses expert and he was very excited about the find of Gladiola on the beach by Bezeng– he says it might be Gladiolus inudensis and it might interest a PHD student that he knows. It is a clear indication that radiation of this species was rapid (even faster than animal evolutionary radiation).

Robin the spider expert's highlight was she found a retreat web which is a unique web with tunnels. The spider stays in a silk lined tunnel with a number of thin strands which extends from the tunnel. This is used to help to detect pray and possible danger.

Tunnel web spider

Robin observing the spiders she just caught.

Richard from the marine team had a good day with fish sampling as a highlight. Four species of fish, two crabs and two terrestrial snails were found. Tomorrow mud skippers is his goal…

Brigitte, the ant expert, found that the camping area is dominated by a single species of ant, possibly an invasive species. Several new species were found outside the camping area. Some of these ants spent most of their time below ground or are mostly nocturnal. "Discovering these nest is exiting", she said.

Brigitte sampling ants

And then of course the highlight of the day for Elmarie and Isa was when the team, organized by Michelle, prepared supper for the group.

Everyone joined to make supper