“Surely this is the most solitary organism in the world,” wrote paleontologist Richard Fortey in his guide about the evolution of life.
He was speaking about Encephalartos woodii (E. woodii), a plant from South Africa. E. woodii is a member of the cycad household, heavy crops with thick trunks and enormous stiff leaves that kind a majestic crown. These resilient survivors have outlasted dinosaurs and a number of mass extinctions. Once widespread, they’re at the moment one in every of the most threatened species on the planet.
The solely recognized wild E. Woodii was found in 1895 by the botanist John Medley Wood whereas he was on a botanical expedition in the Ngoye Forest in South Africa. He searched the neighborhood for others, however none might be discovered. Over the subsequent couple of a long time, botanists eliminated stems and offshoots and cultivated them in gardens.
Fearing that the last stem could be destroyed, the Forestry Department eliminated it from the wild in 1916 for safekeeping in a protecting enclosure in Pretoria, South Africa, making it extinct in the wild. The plant has since been propagated worldwide. However, the E. woodii faces an existential disaster. All the crops are clones from the Ngoye specimen. They are all males, and with out a female, pure replica is unimaginable. E. woodii’s story is one in every of each survival and solitude.
My crew’s analysis was impressed by the dilemma of the lonely plant and the risk that a female should be on the market. Our analysis entails utilizing distant sensing applied sciences and synthetic intelligence to help in our search for a female in the Ngoye Forest.
The evolutionary journey of cycads
Cycads are the oldest surviving plant teams alive at the moment and are also known as “living fossils” or “dinosaur plants” as a consequence of their evolutionary historical past courting again to the Carboniferous interval, roughly 300 million years in the past. During the Mesozoic period (250-66 million years in the past), also referred to as the Age of Cycads, these crops had been ubiquitous, thriving in the heat, humid climates that characterised the interval.
Although they resemble ferns or palms, cycads usually are not associated to both. Cycads are gymnosperms, a group that features conifers and ginkgos. Unlike flowering crops (angiosperms), cycads reproduce utilizing cones. It is unimaginable to inform male and female aside till they mature and produce their magnificent cones.
Female cones are sometimes extensive and spherical, and male cones seem elongated and narrower. The male cones produce pollen, which is carried by bugs (weevils) to the female cones. This historic technique of replica has remained largely unchanged for thousands and thousands of years.
Despite their longevity, at the moment cycads are ranked as the most endangered residing organisms on Earth with the majority of the species thought-about threatened with extinction. This is due to their sluggish progress and reproductive cycles, sometimes taking ten to twenty years to mature, and habitat loss as a consequence of deforestation, grazing, and over-collection. Cycads have turn out to be symbols of botanical rarity.
Their hanging look and historic lineage make them widespread in unique decorative horticulture and that has led to unlawful commerce. Rare cycads can command exorbitant costs from $620 (495 kilos) per cm with some specimens promoting for thousands and thousands of kilos every. The poaching of cycads is a risk to their survival.
Among the most beneficial species is the E. woodii. It is protected in botanical gardens with safety measures similar to alarmed cages designed to discourage poachers.
AI in the sky
In our search to seek out a female E.woodii we’ve used progressive applied sciences to discover areas of the forest from a vertical vantage level. In 2022 and 2024, our drone surveys coated an space of 195 acres or 148 soccer fields, creating detailed maps from hundreds of photographs taken by the drones. It’s nonetheless a small portion of the Ngoye Forest, which covers 10,000 acres.
Our AI system enhanced the effectivity and accuracy of those searches. As E. woodii is taken into account extinct in the wild, artificial photos had been utilized in the AI mannequin’s coaching to enhance its means, through a picture recognition algorithm, to recognise cycads by form in numerous ecological contexts.
Plant species globally are disappearing at an alarming fee. Since all present E. woodii specimens are clones, their potential for genetic variety in the face of environmental change and illness is restricted.
Notable examples embody the Great Famine in 1840s Ireland, the place the uniformity of cloned potatoes worsened the disaster, and the vulnerability of clonal Cavendish bananas to Panama illness, which threatens their manufacturing because it did with the Gros Michel banana in the Fifties.
Finding a female would imply E. woodii is not at the brink of extinction and will revive the species. A female would permit for sexual replica, usher in genetic variety, and signify a breakthrough in conservation efforts.
E. woodii is a sobering reminder of the fragility of life on Earth. But our quest to find a female E. woodii reveals there may be hope even for the most endangered species if we act quick sufficient.
Laura Cinti, Research Fellow in bio artwork & plant habits, University of Southampton. This article is republished from The Conversation below a Creative Commons license. Read the unique article.