Saving Endangered Species Research Program

How did it all start?

Charles Darwin was the first person to attempt to grow lady’s slippers. He never succeeded and for the next 150 years or so, lady’s slippers were very difficult to grow from seed, usually taking about 9 months to germinate with less than 20% of the seeds germinating, until about 20 year ago, when Dr. Faletra and his students at the Lin-wood High School, Lincoln, NH, had a breakthrough discovery through the Saving Endangered Species Research Program. The method they discovered drastically increased germination and development rates of the showy lady’s slippers. Their paper AXENIC SEED CULTURE AND MICROPROPAGATION OF CYPRIPEDIUM REGINAE was published in 1998 by the Journal of Selbyana. The paper changed the landscape of how people grew temperate Cypripedium species in the world.

Dr Faletra started the research program at the Lin-wood High School in 1994. He was inspired to create authentic science research opportunities for his students and to foster their love of science. The research program was terminated when Dr. Faletra left for the US Department of Energy's Office of Science where he served as a Senior Science Advisor and Director of Workforce Development. But after retiring from his position at the DOE, Dr. Faletra restarted the program at a new school, Crossroads Academy in Lyme, NH. This program later moved under the management of the New Hampshire Academy of Science where Dr. Faletra serves as the Executive Director.

Our research approach

Although Dr. Faletra and his previous students’ work established a way to grow the showy lady’s slippers efficiently, it did not establish a method for restoring the wild population and saving the plant from extinction. At the NHAS program, students, teachers and scientists are now developing a model system for plant restoration of these lady’s slippers.  We believe that by understanding the life cycle in the wild and everything about the plant’s tissues, anatomy, requirements for growing in laboratory conditions, and engaging with the public, we can create a complete model for repopulating endangered plants to the wild.  Our ultimate goal is for our model to be used by conservation organizations around the world to prevent loss of biodiversity.

Life cycle study

We believe that we need to understand the full life cycle of these lady’s slippers. It starts with understanding how to best germinate seed to produce seedlings efficiently; how to vernalize seedlings, which is to mimic their dormancy in the winter; how to get the best survival when transplanting to soil, and how to make sure seedlings mature to a flowering state in the wild or in sanctuaries. Finally, we must also ensure that our mature plants continue to produce seeds by studying the natural pollinators of the lady’s slippers.

Histology

 The most efficient way to reproduce large numbers of plants is through cloning. This is how commercial orchid production is done. The disadvantage of cloning is that all the plants have the same genetic makeup. This is not very desirable, but cloning can serve as a backup plan in case the population of a plant crashes. To clone a plant, its rapidly dividing tissues must be located because these are the tissues that will be cloned. We must examine every histological (study of tissues) aspect of the plant in order to locate these tissues. Understanding a plant’s tissues also opens a whole new world of experiments. 

Community Outreach

The lady’s slipper’s habitat is rare. The few places where it thrives are being threatened by human development. Habitat degradation is a worldwide issue, not just for lady’s slippers. We must reach out to the public to make them aware of biodiversity loss. One approach is to get our community involved in establishing reserves in private and public lands for endangered slipper orchids. We call these reserves “sanctuaries”.

IMportance and Objective of What We Are Doing

It is said that variety is the spice of life.  Life in all its variety of forms is the spice of the Earth.  The scientific term for the variety of life on earth is biodiversity.  To an environmental biologist, biodiversity is the primary indicator of the health of our planet.  Places of intense biodiversity are called hotspots.  These hotspots are of particular interest to biologists because they can be used as a general measure of the world’s biodiversity (Brooks et. al., 2002).  Hotspots covered about 12% of the world's land in 1950.  By 2009, hotspots decreased to only 1.4% of the planet’s land surface (Swarts and Dixon, 2009).  This rapid decline of hotspots is a sign that the world is facing what many scientists believe is the sixth mass extinction, the “Holocene Extinction”.

Over the years, conservation through habitat protection has been the most common approach in the fight against plant extinction.  Unfortunately, this approach has not worked (Swarts and Dixon, 2009).  Restoring endangered species to the wild might be another approach, but worldwide plant restoration efforts are rare…surprisingly, even more rare than animal restoration efforts.  For restoration efforts to be most effective, they should be based on a model system to combat biodiversity loss.  The objective of the research program at Crossroads Academy, in which I am involved, is to establish a model for worldwide plant restoration and prevention of biodiversity decline.

Orchids As A Model System To Study Plant Endangerment

Scientists who study humans often use animals as a model system.  A model animal system is an animal that is easier to control and study than the more complex animal.  For instance, fruit flies are used to study human genetics because, like humans, they have chromosomes with genes and those genes are made of the same DNA found in all life.  Fruit flies are cheap and easy to experiment with in a controlled laboratory environment.  They also multiply quickly.  A model plant should have similar qualities: easy to grow in a laboratory, multiplies reasonably quickly, and be easy to manipulate.

Orchids, A Red Flag Organism

The most diverse family of flowering plants is the Orchidaceae with over 25,000 species appearing on 6 continents.  They are frequently found in biodiversity hotspots and are very sensitive to habitat changes because of their close entanglement with their habitats.

An example of this entanglement is the orchid seed.  In most fruits, like a watermelon, the bulk of the fruit is nutrient and the seeds are moderately sized.  These seeds do not have to depend on external help for germination since they have their own built-in food supply.  This is also the case in almost all seeds: corn, rice, apples, peaches, squash, cucumber, etc.  Orchid seeds are peculiar in the plant world because they have no built-in food supply.  Without having to invest much energy in their tiny seeds, orchids produce thousands of seeds, each about the size of a dust particle.  This comes with a catch; they depend on something else in their environment to provide them with nutrients.  Orchid seeds have coevolved with mycorrhizal fungi to supply them with food and to germinate in the wild. 

Another example of the orchid’s reliance on its environment is its relationship with its pollinator. Many orchids have only a single pollinator.  If the specific pollinator is not present, the orchid will be unable to produce seeds.  If the environment changes rapidly, the mycorrhiza or the pollinator might disappear and lead to the extinction of the orchid.

Because they are so closely dependent on organisms in their environment, orchids are ideal red flag organisms for predicting loss of biodiversity.