The Arbornaut, page 28
Trees, tall, evergreen, the branchlets lepidote. Leaves alternate, petiolate, the stipules fugacious, the blade simple, entire, the upper surface glabrous, the lower surface covered with numerous overlapping scarious-hyaline peltate scales. Flowers ramiflorous, densely fasciculate on protuberances of the old wood, pedicellate, the pedicels articulate near the middle, densely lepidote; epicalyx valvate, irregularly 3–4-lobed at the apex, splitting to the base on one side and deciduous, densely lepidote without; calyx valvate, more or less irregularly 5-dentate apically, carnose, deciduous, densely lepidote without, the scales peltate, scarious-hyaline and overlapping; corolla absent; staminal tube 5-dentate-lobulate to 5-lobate, each lobe with 7–11 stamens along the margins; stamens with short filaments, the connectives irregularly spherical to club-shaped, covered with numerous stipitate 1-locular thecae, the latter more or less globular, densely covered with minute deciduous mammiform processes, dehiscent by means of an annular transverse median slit (circumscissile).
—ANDRÉ ROBYNS, “Revision of the Genus Cullenia Wight (Bombacaceae—Durioneae),” Bulletin du Jardin botanique National de Belgique 40, no. 3 (1970): 241–54
When I first started botany training, I could not survive without a botanical dictionary, so that each word could be translated into everyday language. But with practice, all those ovaries, pistils, and stamens took on extremely precise meaning, thanks to many centuries of botanists who formulated taxonomic nomenclature. For field biologists, the challenges of finding species in nature is enormous, but equal to that is the daunting task of classifying all those discoveries. It can take a lifetime to figure out how to explore ecosystems and find species, but another lifetime to learn their classification. The taxonomy of plants, or any other biodiversity for that matter, is a moving target. As better microscopes and improved DNA analyses become available, the evolutionary tree of organisms is revised, updated, and sometimes found to be plain wrong. The genus Cullenia seems stable with three species, of which C. exarillata serves a keystone role within India’s forests.
Although the taxonomy of vedippala is known, its ecology and life history are not. This iconic species is not only a keystone but appears to exhibit critically important mutualisms with its pollinators, including bats, birds, and several mammals. Again, not enough research exists about India’s canopies to fully understand the complex interactions of her forest ecosystems. In addition to providing homes to many animals, Cullenia harbors about 40 percent of the country’s recorded epiphytes, so its crown is a major hub of floral biodiversity. The edible fleshy sepals of its fruits provide a meal for some of the larger pollinators, including sloth bears and civets. Other arboreal creatures eat the fruits, such as Nilgiri langurs, lion-tailed macaques, Hanuman langurs, Malabar giant squirrels, three-striped palm squirrels, and terrestrial rodents. Some fruits fall to the ground or into streams, where another gang of predators awaits—insects, mollusks, crabs, fish, rodents, squirrels, and some ground birds. Other iconic species rely on vedippala overstory for their understory habitat, including tigers, leopards, and Asian elephants. There is a scenario dubbed “empty forests” whereby clearing and fragmentation create isolated stands of trees devoid of biodiversity, because the insects and birds are not easily able to repopulate, which requires a long-term recovery process. To continue to serve as India’s Noah’s ark by providing a refuge for so many species, vedippala needs to remain a focal tree in healthy stands. T Ganesh and Soubadra, the dynamic duo who lead important field research on India’s trees, represent the human version of “type specimens” as a new breed of conservationists who operate without large budgets, significant government funding, or nonprofit underwriting. Such small teams, working tirelessly in countries where research dollars for forests remain sparse, are the lifeblood of current global conservation. Similar individuals exist in Sri Lanka, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Bhutan, and many other biodiversity hot spots. They are the understated heroes of our planet, and I am dedicated to helping them advance their efforts by providing tools, ideas, support, and international collaboration.
9
A TREETOP BIOBLITZ
Counting 1,659 Species in Malaysia’s Tropical Forests in Ten Days
THE HILLSIDE WAS BLANKETED in a dense cotton ball of fog, mystically enshrouding all the trees. Straining to see any upper limbs, the tree rigger Tim Kovar, whom I had dragged around the globe for years as my arbornaut partner, aimed his Big Boy slingshot and fired. Up, up it went and over a sturdy branch of dark red meranti (Shorea curtisii). Our first canopy tree of the renowned Southeast Asian family Dipterocarpaceae was rigged! The first climb was almost spiritual as we ascended into the white blanket enveloping Penang Hill. A troop of macaque monkeys chattered below us, perhaps because we had invaded their home? On another day, a small band of dusky leaf monkeys blessed our climb with their presence and an elusive colugo gazed quietly from an adjacent perch. The Malaysian forest, with its crowns stretching up into the heavens (mostly dipterocarps), is brimming with life, yet many of its uppermost secrets remain undetected as part of the unexplored eighth continent.
So how did I get to Southeast Asia to work on dipterocarp conservation? If you google “canopy biology,” my name comes up near the top of the list. At least that’s how a canopy construction company in Canada located me. The company was in a bind: a client requested a scientist to critique the placement of a new walkway under construction. Would I fly to Penang, Malaysia, to make a scientific assessment of their proposed site? In 1996, I had taught climbing classes at the Bogor Botanical Gardens in Indonesia, awestruck at the time by two local colleagues, Sofi and Mati, who managed to climb in their traditional head coverings plus gorgeous flowing-yet-impractical-for-climbing garb. In 2013, I was invited by the royal family of Johor, Malaysia, as the keynote speaker for the country’s Conservation Day. Even longer ago, I had stopped in Kuala Lumpur en route to Sydney University on the flight that launched my graduate adventures. I was thrilled at the opportunity to return to the world’s tallest trees, and even happier to provide scientific oversight of a new walkway.
A few months later, my entire world was transformed, with a new canopy walkway project in Penang and the challenge to execute a biodiversity survey of their local tropical forest within a ridiculously short time frame to meet a deadline for a UNESCO World Heritage nomination of the site. The success of this conservation and ecotourism project was due to the vision of one local philanthropic business entity, the Cockrell family, who operated The Habitat Foundation and underwrote the Penang walkway thanks to their passion for local forests. This was my first experience pitching big conservation projects to a business entity, where one major donation can jump-start a project faster than the conventional, albeit inefficient, process of writing grants, rewriting grants, then invariably reducing the budget and resubmitting the grant again. Continuing on my mid-career trajectory of sharing the canopy toolkit with different countries, I was focused on becoming a better conservation steward, not just a conventional tree scientist. In India, I first learned the importance of sharing the arbornaut toolkit with other countries; in the Amazon, I leaned on the contributions of citizen scientists to achieve greater outcomes; and in Ethiopia, I learned to measure success by acreage of forest saved, not just amassing technical data for academic publications. In Malaysia, in addition to partnering with a business entity, not conventional academic funding, I also incorporated a new public-science-based activity, the BioBlitz, to survey species.
BioBlitzes, defined as rapid species counts involving a crowdsourced activity over a short span of time, started in 2006 when some children were searching for nine-spotted ladybugs in Washington, DC. Approximately five hundred species of ladybugs exist in North America, each with different numbers of spots and colors. For most of the twentieth century, the nine-spotted ladybug was the most common; it was even declared the state insect of New York. But the invasive European seven-spotted lady beetle quickly and aggressively began replacing the native species. The Lost Ladybug Project was initiated to document any sightings of the endangered nine-spotted ladybugs during a summer season. Answering the challenge, two children, Jilene and Jonathan Penhale, found a nine-spotted ladybug near their home in Northern Virginia. Hundreds of volunteers turned out to look for additional specimens, and their search was considered to be the first BioBlitz, whereby many volunteers search a specific area over a defined time frame. Unfortunately, no additional specimens were found at that location, although subsequent surveys found viable populations on Long Island. Online resources allowed participants to amass over forty various images of ladybugs with nine spots around the country. Today, similar surveys sometimes yield thousands of images, but the nine-spotted ladybug was an important pilot.
Since then, BioBlitzes have become a great tool for amateur naturalists and professional field biologists to team up and find, identify, and survey species during a short burst of time. When images of species, along with their identifications, are uploaded on social media, the value of these surveys is enhanced by making the results available to a global audience. This concept played right into my passion for public science communication and the challenges of finding species in complex forest habitats. The notion of engaging citizen scientists was a game changer. However, a recent scientific review of public engagement in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment stated that BioBlitzes remain more common in industrialized countries, mainly because people have more volunteer time and easier access to technology for online data collection. So it felt all the more important to work toward greater inclusivity in the sciences by establishing public engagement efforts outside of Europe and North America.
In Penang, I met my client—a family with local roots who also operated a diverse international company. The developers and funders of the proposed aerial trail were one and the same. They wanted to give back to their community by building an eco-park that would educate the public about tropical rain forests and believed a canopy focus made good economic sense in terms of attracting visitors by providing a unique rain forest experience. This was the first conservation project I had worked on for which someone wrote one big check; my role was to ensure that the science and conservation outcomes would be effective and long-lasting. The first assignment was to inspect the walkway site and design education interpretation along its path. Second, when the Canadian construction team suffered some glitches in their construction process, I offered insights based on prior walkway construction experience. They built not one, but two walkways, using a special design element called a ribbon bridge, at a cost of 8 million Malaysian ringgits (RM), the equivalent of $1.8 million. This type of skywalk utilizes cement for its underpinning, meaning the bridges can literally hold hundreds of people at once. It may have been overkill, but it resulted in two elegant bridges, spanning over 450 feet and rising over 125 feet high, with a large platform in between. I hosted several classes and walks with the park’s education staff, providing them with stories and facts about the eighth continent relevant for their daily role as interpretive guides. And third, the funders wanted to know how to turn their walkways into a world-class canopy research site; I suggested three things: (1) conduct a biodiversity survey to showcase the primary forest by bringing in an international team to partner with local scientists; (2) secure the landscape with permanent conservation status; and (3) create a field station offering treetop access that would attract biologists to conduct long-term research. I had overseen one or two of these three components at other field sites, but never had all three so conveniently packaged into one project. Suddenly, I found myself co-organizing a biodiversity survey, collaborating on a UNESCO World Heritage site nomination, and advising on a future field station.
Ever since Charles Darwin collected thousands of species in the tropics during his expedition on the Beagle, biodiversity has become synonymous with ecosystem health and resilience. But the toolkit for tropical species surveys has not advanced much over recent decades as compared to genetics, agriculture, or even astronomy. Conservation International developed their Rapid Assessment Program (RAP) in the twentieth century, whereby they engaged teams of experts to conduct surveys of diverse global ecosystems as a means of determining which habitats were the most important for saving. In the twenty-first century, the notion of citizen science is expanding the scope and breadth of biodiversity surveys using rapid assessment, now called a BioBlitz when the public is engaged. Using volunteers over a finite period of time, surveys of urban parks, beaches, or almost any ecosystem can be executed rapidly to assist with conservation management, or to assess endangered species. In addition to engaging the public, cell phone apps such as iNaturalist (www.inaturalist.org) have allowed integration of species data into social media platforms that also serve as a library for the scientific community and conservation practitioners. When I was the chief of science at a California museum, I had the good fortune to fund and engage iNaturalist as an arm of our museum research team, which ultimately spotlighted it within academic and museum circles. It is now comanaged by National Geographic, whose international brand has enabled the app to expand its global reach.
The Habitat eco-park, situated on Penang Hill in the state of Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, attracts visitors from the city with its nature trail, two ribbon bridges (called Langur Way), and another aerial trail consisting of a series of zip lines. Collectively, the Habitat funders, local university scientists, and government officials aspired to submit a UNESCO nomination for the adjacent 7,285 hectares of forest, along with 5,196 hectares of offshore marine sanctuary. By definition, biosphere reserves are areas of marine or terrestrial ecosystems that receive international recognition within the framework of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB). They are established to link relationships between humans and nature, so both biological and cultural resources are required for a successful site. This region was characterized by primary lowland tropical rain forest, dominated by the trees of the family Dipterocarpaceae. It was an exciting proposition to find out what biodiversity inhabited these hillsides and recruit both local and international experts to comb the hillsides from the top to the bottom of the dipterocarps.
Despite easy access to a major city with a distinguished university, no organized natural history survey had been conducted on Penang Hill. During the first visit to meet with the funders and see their site, I also set up local meetings with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), the country’s major science institution, and gave a talk about the canopy, highlighting their incredible backyard biodiversity in Malaysia. The biology department chair invited me soon after to become a research professor, an unpaid but respected title. Since that first seminar, I worked closely with USM and as a result of their enthusiasm, we created a working group to plan a BioBlitz, the first part of a three-stage plan to make Penang Hill an international research center. The corporate donors generously awarded me a grant to invite participants and, with careful administration, funded approximately thirty international scientists and another fifty USM biologists and students, plus a few government officials and staff from the eco-park. We carefully matched up local scientists with international experts so the surveys would encourage future collaboration. I wrote an additional grant to fund a team of teenagers who livestreamed a virtual field expedition to schools around the world, so in total, the expedition included 117 participants. Of course, we did not manage to avoid logistical drama. A few scientists wanted more funds than the budget allowed, some wanted to bring their children (which was fine but required extra homework to ensure their safety during fieldwork), and others wanted to take a vacation after they completed the blitz, which was also fine but required extra effort to ship specimens in the aftermath. All in all, it was relatively seamless given the breadth and scope of our group.
After carefully studying BioBlitz protocols, we improved on the recipe in six ways: (1) executed comprehensive whole-forest sampling from treetops to soil, not just surveys on the forest floor; (2) recruited experts who could classify all major groups of species, from water bears to fungi to slow lorises; (3) created strategic partnerships of Malaysian experts with international scientists; (4) diversified the team to include students, citizen scientists, government, university participants, and taxonomists; (5) invited women and minorities in significant proportions as participants; and (6) used social media to share the findings around the globe. The existing literature made it clear that no BioBlitz prior to this had tackled all those goals at once. It took a year to plan, including the organization of two scientific summits in Penang to ramp up local enthusiasm, then ten days to execute the survey and another two years to write up the results, with some new species still awaiting scientific classification even as I write, probably as backlog on some overworked scientist’s desk. This is a perfect example of how taxonomy runs into a bottleneck and, sadly, explains why scientists bemoan that some forests will be destroyed long before their biodiversity is ever classified.
To prepare for the event, an intrepid team of local foresters was hired to survey the hillside, creating an essential list of tree identifications, important to document the location of an insect feeding or a bird nesting in a canopy. In Malaysia, government agencies play a huge role in any decision-making or land stewardship, so I also spent many hours in large rooms of (mostly male) officials discussing the nuances of a UNESCO proposal. The BioBlitz survey information would be provided as part of the nomination. In addition to the UNESCO dossier, the loan of certain specimens to foreign institutions for identification also needed careful paperwork to ensure legal transfers. It is critical to conform to local regulations involving the collection of specimens by foreign scientists, not just in Malaysia but also many other countries. All UNESCO nominations must be submitted by regional governments, so many agencies, as well as the university, were actively engaged in writing the submission at the time of our survey.
