“Absolutely that is essentially the most solitary organism on the planet,” wrote paleontologist Richard Fortey in his ebook in regards to 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 vegetation with thick trunks and enormous stiff leaves that type an imposing crown. These resilient survivors have outlasted dinosaurs and a number of mass extinctions. As soon as widespread, they’re as we speak one of the threatened species on the planet.
The one recognized wild E. Woodii was found in 1895 by the botanist John Medley Wooden whereas he was on a botanical expedition within the Ngoye Forest in South Africa. He searched the neighborhood for others, however none may very well be discovered. Over the following couple of a long time, botanists eliminated stems and offshoots and cultivated them in gardens.
Fearing that the ultimate stem could be destroyed, the Forestry Division eliminated it from the wild in 1916 for safekeeping in a protecting enclosure in Pretoria, South Africa, making it extinct within the wild. The plant has since been propagated worldwide. Nevertheless, the E. woodii faces an existential disaster. All of the vegetation are clones from the Ngoye specimen. They’re all males, and with out a feminine, pure replica is unattainable. E. woodii’s story is considered one of each survival and solitude.
My workforce’s analysis was impressed by the dilemma of the lonely plant and the chance {that a} feminine should still be on the market. Our analysis entails utilizing distant sensing applied sciences and synthetic intelligence to help in our seek for a feminine within the Ngoye Forest.
The evolutionary journey of cycads
Cycads are the oldest surviving plant teams alive as we speak and are sometimes called “residing fossils” or “dinosaur vegetation” as a result of their evolutionary historical past relationship again to the Carboniferous interval, roughly 300 million years in the past. Through the Mesozoic period (250-66 million years in the past), often known as the Age of Cycads, these vegetation have been ubiquitous, thriving within the heat, humid climates that characterised the interval.
Though they resemble ferns or palms, cycads will not be associated to both. Cycads are gymnosperms, a gaggle that features conifers and ginkgos. In contrast to flowering vegetation (angiosperms), cycads reproduce utilizing cones. It’s unattainable to inform female and male aside till they mature and produce their magnificent cones.
Feminine cones are usually extensive and spherical, and male cones seem elongated and narrower. The male cones produce pollen, which is carried by bugs (weevils) to the feminine cones. This historical technique of replica has remained largely unchanged for tens of millions of years.
Regardless of their longevity, as we speak cycads are ranked as essentially the most endangered residing organisms on Earth with nearly all of the species thought of threatened with extinction. That is due to their sluggish progress and reproductive cycles, usually taking ten to twenty years to mature, and habitat loss as a result of deforestation, grazing, and over-collection. Cycads have turn into symbols of botanical rarity.
Their putting look and historical lineage make them widespread in unique decorative horticulture and that has led to unlawful commerce. Uncommon cycads can command exorbitant costs from $620 (495 kilos) per cm with some specimens promoting for tens of millions of kilos every. The poaching of cycads is a risk to their survival.
Among the many most respected species is the E. woodii. It’s protected in botanical gardens with safety measures reminiscent of alarmed cages designed to deter poachers.
AI within the sky
In our search to discover a feminine E.woodii now we have used progressive applied sciences to discover areas of the forest from a vertical vantage level. In 2022 and 2024, our drone surveys lined an space of 195 acres or 148 soccer fields, creating detailed maps from 1000’s 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 within the wild, artificial photos have been used within the AI mannequin’s coaching to enhance its capacity, by way of a picture recognition algorithm, to recognise cycads by form in several ecological contexts.
Plant species globally are disappearing at an alarming price. Since all current E. woodii specimens are clones, their potential for genetic variety within the face of environmental change and illness is restricted.
Notable examples embody the Nice Famine in 1840s Eire, 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 within the Nineteen Fifties.
Discovering a feminine would imply E. woodii is not on the brink of extinction and will revive the species. A feminine would enable 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. However our quest to find a feminine E. woodii exhibits there’s hope even for essentially the most endangered species if we act quick sufficient.
Laura Cinti, Analysis Fellow in bio artwork & plant habits, College of Southampton. This text is republished from The Dialog below a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article.