Bloody Malarchy!

So I’m five hours away from having to get up and fly out of Auckland to Coolangatta, driving down the Pacific Highway of New South Wales picking plant specimens for my masters – what a drama getting the export permit! Anyway, light(er) blogging over that time period, but lots of pictures when I get back!!! Exciting!!!

Plant of the Week

It’s quiet here today as I realized the journal article I brought from home is actually largely irrelevant, loaded with theoretical mathmatics and ergo, ripe for the recycling bin. I’m also flat out preparing for my trip to Coastal NSW on the 20th (flying out at 6.40am ^^..^^) so it’s nice to take a break from arranging permits and getting identification books sorted out.
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So, this week’s plant of the week is another member of the pea family (Fabaceae), one of the few native peas found in New Zealand, apart from the kowhai (Sophora spp.) and native brooms (Carmichaelia spp.).

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Kowhai-ngutu-kaka – Clianthus puniceus – Kakabeak

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This plant is really striking, with beautiful red flowers that apparently look something like the beak of the native Kaka (Nestor meridionalis), hence the common name.

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Kakabeak flowers look remarkably similar to the other pea that I have profiled Sturt’s Desert Pea, that the latter was originally classified in the Clianthus genus before being reassigned to Swainsona. Kakabeak is now the only remaining species within the Clianthus genus.

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Despite being a popular garden cultivar, Kakabeak is actually a threatened native species. It occurs naturally in the East Cape/Hawkes Bay area, where only about 200 wild individuals survive. Most of the garden varieties that people have are clones or cultivars, which means that the genetic diversity of the species is actually far smaller than what would be expected from the number of individuals alive. In the wild, Kakabeak is threatened by goat, deer, pig and possum browsing.

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Rapid molecular evolution in a living fossil

Much of the work I’m doing for my Masters focuses on rates of molecular evolution in plants, specifically neutral; molecular evolution, that is, areas of the genome that are not under any strong selection and are ‘free’ to gather mutations without constraint.

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I’m specifically looking at the effect of environmental conditions on those rates, and without giving too much away, rainfall.

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Anyway, a recent article by some New Zealand researchers, including Dr. Craig Millar from my department at the Univeristy of Auckland, presents some very interesting data within the field that I’m working in, and it’s seriously cool…

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Tuataras are ancient animals, in that they are the only living representative of a lineage of reptiles (the Sphenodontia) that emerged early during the age of the dinosaurs, some 220 million years ago. Since then, they have undergone very little morphological evolution, hence their designation as a ‘living fossil’. They are poikilothermic (cold blooded), they have very low metabolic rates, they grow very slowly, and they reproduce even slower. As a result, and in line with their minimal morphological change, it could be expected that they have a relatively low rate of neutral molecular evolution.

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Well, apparently not. Using ancient and modern Tuatara bones, the authors were able to show that the rate of tuatara mitochondrial DNA change isn’t even similar to warm blooded, rapidly breeding animals which have changed their appearance and body structures relatively rapidly over time, but much much faster. Amazing!

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This has two important consequences. Firstly, it shows that rates of change to DNA aren’t necessarily matched by rates in morphology or appearance – an animal like the tuatara has changed very little in appearance over the last 220 million years, compared to say a Moa, or a Horse or Cave Lion, which have, relatively speaking, changed very rapidly in the intervening years. Moreover, and more importantly for me: the rate of molecular evolution isn’t necessarily bound to environmental conditions such as temperature, or to life history characteristics like generation time, or even endogenous factors such as metabolic rate.

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This field just gets more and more interesting every day! O.o

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Article:

Rapid Molecular Evolution in a living fossil

Jennifer M. Hay, Sankar Subramanian, Craig D. Millar, Elmira Mohandesan and David M. Lambert

Trends in Genetics 24(3):106-109

He’s got a face like a dropped pie…

So early on and I’ve already lost so much motivation to write here! Well…only for a little while. I’m finishing one job, starting a new one, preparing for my trip to Coastal NSW on the 20th (including trying to deal with the Australian Department of Environment Arts and Heritage to get my permit to export plant material…enough said) and trying to get the energy to work on my thesis…

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You’ll have to excuse the silence…but a plant of the week will be posted shortly! Not that many people actually read this thing anyway