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28 November 2019 | Story Leonie Bolleurs
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Dr Sandy-Lynn Steenhuisen and Ruth Cozien at a spot high up in the Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site, close to Sentinel Peak, photographing a Drakensberg crag lizard underneath the leaves of the ‘Hidden Flower’.

Flowers high up in the Maloti-Drakensberg World Heritage Site made world news when it was discovered that the Drakensberg Crag Lizard is their sole pollinator. 

This first for continental Africa – a plant being pollinated by a lizard – is a discovery by a research group including Dr Sandy-Lynn Steenhuisen, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Plant Sciences and affiliate of the Afromontane Research Unit (ARU) at the Qwaqwa Campus of the University of the Free State (UFS), in collaboration with Dr Timo van der Niet, Prof Steven Johnson, and project leader Ruth Cozien, all from the Pollination Ecology Research Laboratory and Centre for Functional Biodiversity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Besides their work being published in popular news here in South Africa (including an isiZulu article), it has also received coverage in, among others, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States of America. 

Is it a bee, a bird, perhaps a mouse?

‘Hidden Flower’, true to its name, is a plant species with flowers hidden at ground level, underneath the leaves of the plant. Like the leaves, the flowers are also green. With the flowers filled with nectar (up to 1 ml per plant) and strongly scented, one concludes that, just as with other flowers, these flowers must be visited by a pollinator. Is it a bee, is it a bird, perhaps a mouse/non-flying mammal?

According to Dr Steenhuisen, who was brought into the project because of her experience with rodents pollinating proteas, many plants are adapted to attract and be pollinated by a specific animal. They attract their pollinators using particular scents and colours and reward them for their service with, for example, nectar, oil, fragrance, and sometimes even shelter. 

The ‘Hidden Flower’ initially had the group of researchers thinking that it was being pollinated by a non-flying mammal. “Everything about the plant made it look like it should be mammal-pollinated,” Dr Steenhuisen said. 

They investigated all options, using several techniques to assess the contribution of different possible animals to set seed. To further assist them in their quest to find the true pollinator, the team put up motion cameras that recorded activity in the area of the ‘Hidden Flower’. 

Great was their surprise when studying the video material after a week of fieldwork in the mountains, finding shy lizards dipping their snouts in the ‘Hidden Flower’ and lapping up the nectar.

Dr Steenhuisen described this discovery as completely bizarre, exciting, and fascinating. 

To make 100% sure that lizards are pollinating the ‘Hidden Flower’, these animals were excluded from the plants. Results published in a paper in Ecology showed that when the lizards were experimentally excluded from the plants, the number of seeds produced dropped dramatically by almost 95%. This finding helped to further prove their discovery. 

Strong scent and bright orange colour attract

The team researched the new phenomenon and found that although flower visitation by lizards is not unknown, it occurs almost exclusively on oceanic islands. Cozien says one should keep in mind that mountains are like sky islands and might therefore have similarities with oceanic islands in terms of their ecology.

The strong scent and the touch of orange at the base of the inside of the flowers is believed to play an important role in attracting lizards. The little lizard may recognise the spots of orange inside the flowers which resemble the orange colour of a male lizard in mating season, attracting females. Lured by the strong scent and the orange spots, the reptiles stick their snouts into the flower in search of nectar, pollinating the ‘Hidden Flower’; thus, making sure that this flower will continue to grow on the slopes of Sentinel Peak in the Maloti Drakensberg range. 

This research finding on lizard pollination, which reads almost like a fairy tale with its islands, hidden flowers, nectar from the gods, and little dragons, shows that there are still many unknown and surprising interactions that need to be discovered and conserved to ensure a healthy ecological system. 

The research findings of this study were published in April 2019. 

News Archive

Carbon dioxide makes for more aromatic decaffeinated coffee
2017-10-27


 Description: Carbon dioxide makes for more aromatic decaffeinated coffee 1b Tags: Carbon dioxide makes for more aromatic decaffeinated coffee 1b 

The Inorganic Group in the Department of Chemistry
at the UFS is systematically researching the utilisation
of carbon dioxide. From the left, are, Dr Ebrahiem Botha,
Postdoctoral Fellow; Mahlomolo Khasemene, MSc student;
Prof André Roodt; Dr Marietjie Schutte-Smith, Senior Lecturer;
and Mokete Motente, MSc student.
Photo: Charl Devenish

Several industries in South Africa are currently producing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide a year, which are released directly into the air. A typical family sedan doing around 10 000 km per year, is annually releasing more than one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The Inorganic Chemistry Research Group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of the Free State (UFS), in collaboration with the University of Zurich in Switzerland, has focused in recent years on using carbon dioxide – which is regarded as a harmful and global warming gas – in a meaningful way. 

According to Prof André Roodt, Head of Inorganic Chemistry at the UFS, the Department of Chemistry has for the past five decades been researching natural products that could be extracted from plants. These products are manufactured by plants through photosynthesis, in other words the utilisation of sunlight and carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other nutrients from the soil.

Caffeine and chlorophyll 
“The Inorganic group is systematically researching the utilisation of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants through chlorophyll and used to make interesting and valuable compounds and sugars, which in turn could be used for the production of important new medicines,” says Prof Roodt.

Caffeine, a major energy enhancer, is also manufactured through photosynthesis in plants. It is commonly found in tea and coffee, but also (artificially added) in energy drinks. Because caffeine is a stimulant of the central nervous system and reduces fatigue and drowsiness, some people prefer decaffeinated coffee when enjoying this hot drink late at night. 

Removing caffeine from coffee could be expensive and time-consuming, but also environmentally unfriendly, because it involves the use of harmful and flammable liquids. Some of the Inorganic Group’s research focus areas include the use of carbon dioxide for the extraction of compounds, such as caffeine from plants. 

“Therefore, the research could lead to the availability of more decaffeinated coffee products. Although decaffeinated coffee is currently aromatic, we want to investigate further to ensure better quality flavours,” says Prof Roodt.

Another research aspect the team is focusing on is the use of carbon dioxide to extract chlorophyll from plants which have medicinal properties themselves. Chemical suppliers sell chlorophyll at R3 000 a gram. “In the process of investigating chlorophyll, our group discovered simpler techniques to comfortably extract larger quantities from green vegetables and other plants,” says Prof Roodt.

Medicines
In addition, the Inorganic Research Group is also looking to use carbon dioxide as a building block for more valuable compounds. Some of these compounds will be used in the Inorganic Group’s research focus on radiopharmaceutical products for the identification and possibly even the treatment of diseases such as certain cancers, tuberculosis, and malaria.

 

 

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