Students in a Uruguay Natural Resources Management Program Find a Gorgeous Orchid - Observation of the Week, 11/10/20

Our Observation of the Week is this Bipinnula montana orchid, seen in Uruguay by @mateoalmada!

The remarkable orchid you see above is one of our most popular recent Observations of the Day, if one goes by social media engagement, and it was seen not only by Mateo Almada but his fellow students in the Universidad del Trabajo de Uruguay’s Degree in Natural Areas Management program. I’d like to thank @flo_grattarola for getting me in touch with Professor Matías Zarucki (@mattzarrr, below), who in turn looped in Mateo.

Students in the Natural Areas Management program train to be park rangers, and Matías tells me 

we use ​iNaturalist as a tool for the registration and identification of species during our field activities. We believe that this is a good didactic tool to motivate students and, at the same time, generate valuable information for the knowledge of biodiversity. In addition to the specific records of our field trips, we created a ​project where we document the biodiversity in two of the school grounds that we visit most often.

Field trips have unfortunately been curtailed this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but in recent months the students and professors were able to restart them due to Uruguay’s generally successful containment of the virus. For example, here they are at Grutas de Salamanca.

The group visited an archaeological site in the state of Maldonado, and Mateo recalls 

The field trip objective was to visit the place and assess the conservation status of the forest. On October 27, during a walk on the hills, we were attentive, appreciating the fauna and flora, and when something caught our attention, we stopped to observe it. It was then when I appreciated the ​Bipinnula montana​. I photographed it and at night I shared it in the application, I didn’t expect the impact it had. I'm happy because it puts my country on the map on something other than football.

What impressed me the most when I saw it was the shape of the tongue with the little hairs and the ribs of the leaf that surrounded it. I felt compelled to capture that beauty with my phone and it become my first plant record in iNat.

Unfortunately, not much is known about this species (“The lack of information represents here one of the problems for biodiversity conservation,” says Mateo), but we do know it grows in both Brazil and Uruguay, and generally grows on dry grasslands. 

Mateo (above), tells me “I have always admired and photographed nature a lot, [and iNaturalist] allows me to save my records in an album where I collect the richness of our biodiversity...

Through the application, I have learned about the importance of collecting information about our flora and fauna to provide data that can be of great help to researchers and natural resources managers. It's great because it is an application that reaches all audiences where anyone with a simple photo can collaborate a lot with the community.


- Here’s a project showing observations made for in the program’s two commonly-visited sites.

- A nice video (en Español) about the University’s Natural Resources Careers program

- Take a gander at other observations of this good looking genus.

Posted on 10 de novembro de 2020, 08:43 PM by tiwane tiwane

Comentários

Nice orchid. Any idea of its pollination biology?

Publicado por tonyrebelo mais de 3 anos antes

Beautiful orchid.

Publicado por carolynstewart mais de 3 anos antes

Mateo said he could only really find this publication and I didn't see any pollination info for B. montana. B. penicillata looks to be pollinated by male Campsomeris bees, using sexual mimicry. They note wasps have been seen pollinating that species as well.

Publicado por tiwane mais de 3 anos antes

Super cool @mateoalmada
Way to go becoming the observation of the week

Publicado por rangermyles mais de 3 anos antes

A very amazing looking plant! I'm ever and again awed by the variety and Beauty of the Natural World!

Publicado por katharinab mais de 3 anos antes

What a fabulous orchid! Thanks for letting us see it!

Publicado por susanhewitt mais de 3 anos antes

What a fantastic observation!

Publicado por kitty12 mais de 3 anos antes

BEAUTIFUL

Publicado por nomolosx mais de 3 anos antes

So beautiful!

Publicado por claudia_ma mais de 3 anos antes

wow ! Amazing planet and, as humans, lucky to have seen this much of diversity spell !

Publicado por dharas mais de 3 anos antes

Pollination: cool. so probably https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/882340-Campsomeris or related genus. Sexual mimicry almost always involves male wasps. Curiously, the wasp visits the flower "backwards" (at least in the picture @tiwane posted above for B. penicillata: fig 9d) - head down and abdomen into the flower. Which suggests that the "rhinophore" must mimic the female head? And the black stripes resembling nectar guides are "abdomen guides". Looks like a great reason to visit Uruguay.

Publicado por tonyrebelo mais de 3 anos antes

Lovely @tiwane ! Thanks for getting the story out there :)

Publicado por flo_grattarola mais de 3 anos antes

While I would hardly call this orchid beautiful (I guess that's in the eye of the beholder) it is certainly a spectacular illustration of evolutionary diversity! Thanks for the pollination info provided by @tonyrebelo to make sense of these structures.

Publicado por drpetesut mais de 3 anos antes

great observation!!

Publicado por sajibbiswas mais de 3 anos antes

Amazing orchid!

Publicado por rvignarajah mais de 3 anos antes

Wow! I'm going to share this with my introductory botany class this week--we're just beginning to talk about Anthophyta and this will help captivate even the most plant-dismissive among them!

Publicado por lybaldwin mais de 3 anos antes

It almost looks like an animal! Congratulations on spotting it!

Publicado por mokennon mais de 3 anos antes

Well, to the wasp that pollinates it, it not only looks like an animal, it looks like a female wasp. What is more it irresistibly smells like a female wasp: unfortunately, the subtle odours are not well conveyed in the photo, even if we could interpret them. (Ditto the UV "colours" of the flower, which will also be helping to fool the wasp into thinking it is a female)
Of course, the males are probably naive and have not yet encountered a female (typically male wasps emerge before females do), or alternatively they dare not ignore a slightly irregular "female".

Publicado por tonyrebelo mais de 3 anos antes

I'm giving a course on Backyard Bioiversity in February and will certainly point my students to this post. We will be having a session on sex amongst the little people and this will be a great example! Thanks again, Martha

Publicado por mokennon mais de 3 anos antes

I'm giving a course on Backyard Bioiversity in February and will certainly point my students to this post. We will be having a session on sex amongst the little people and this will be a great example! Thanks again, Martha

Publicado por mokennon mais de 3 anos antes

Adicionar um Comentário

Iniciar Sessão ou Registar-se to add comments