Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 1
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THE PLANT PRESS Department of Botany & the U.S. National Herbarium New Series - Vol. 22 - No. 1 January-March 2019 Asexuality as a detour, not a dead end By Kathryn Picard istorically, asexuality has been seen by evolutionary homoplasy due to shared ecological habits can mask—or, al- biologists as a short-term solution to a long-term ternatively, falsely suggest—hybridization and/or speciation. Hproblem, with any temporary competitive advantages Yet, for the overwhelming majority of fern specimens housed derived from eschewing sex eventually overshadowed by the in herbaria, these data are not available. The primary goal of absence of mechanisms to increase genotypic diversity. Yet, de- my postdoctoral work is to apply classical spore analysis tech- spite its ostensible limitations, asexuality is a widespread repro- niques to the fern collections in the United States National ductive strategy, especially among ferns where it is generally Herbarium to establish both reproductive mode and ploidy manifested as apomixis. level estimates for the most diverse fern order, Polypodiales. Apomictic ferns deviate from the typical fern sexual life Comprising approximately 80% of extant fern species, the cycle in two ways: 1) the production of unreduced spores Polypodiales lineage is distributed globally and exhibits myr- through meiosis, and 2) the development of an adult fern (spo- iad morphologies corresponding to an equally broad range of rophyte) from the somatic tissue of the free-living gametophyte ecological habits. Unifying these otherwise disparate taxa is without the fusion of sperm and egg. For the few fern lineages the generally consistent production of 64 spores per sporan- that have been studied, approximately 10% of species have been gium in sexually reproducing individuals. By contrast, apo- found to be apomicts. Across angiosperms, the incidence of mictic individuals produce half the number (usually 32) apomixis is markedly lower, with fewer than 1% of species un- unreduced spores per sporangium, allowing for the relatively derstood to exhibit this reproductive mode. With both the po- Continued on page 4 tential evolutionary pitfalls of asexuality and the broad disparity between ferns and angiosperms in mind, it seems only natural to ask why apomixis has played such an outsized role in Approximately 10% of fern species have fern diversification. Reproductive mode and ploidy level are important life his- been found to reproduce asexually. tory characters that can inform phylogenetic studies and tax- onomic revisions of fern taxa, particularly in groups where Department of Botany & the U.S. National Herbarium CHAIR WITH A VIEW L.J.Dorr Working hard think all of us have had a job or two when we were ing machine could crush my hand). (OHSHA was in its in- younger that sticks with us because of some lesson or les- fancy). Not only did the machines I operated fill the milk Isons that we learned. I had my share of odd jobs in high bottles, but they also placed them in crates, stacked the school and college. Nothing particularly inspirational, moti- crates, and carried the stacked crates into an industrial size vational or instructive. Certainly nothing that hinted at my cooler where someone else loaded them onto tractor-trailers. present career. I mowed lawns, painted houses, delivered pre- The job also required an ability to ignore unpleasant odors, a scriptions for a drugstore, washed dishes, stocked shelves in a useful adaptation because milk was constantly spilled on the warehouse, worked on a bookmobile, and clerked for a grain floor and there was no time to mop it up until the end of a company. Some jobs I enjoyed more than others. The job I shift. detested and quit after a few days was conducting marketing My coworkers were almost all immigrants from the Cape surveys. I was expected to stop people on the street in down- Verde Islands. I was the chance replacement for a machine town Boston, people minding their own business, and try to operator who had saved enough money to take the summer get them to answer a series of questions about their use or fa- off to return to Africa to marry. The foreman was tough. In miliarity with certain commercial products. The information theory, he held his position because he was the only em- was preliminary to an advertising campaign. It took me al- ployee who spoke both Portuguese, or Creole, and English. most no time to realize that marketing and sales would not In reality, I think he held his position because he could be in- be my future. timidating. He was, as best I could tell, the only employee The job I took the summer after my first year in college who was a veteran of the Portuguese Colonial War and he had an unusually strong impact on me because it showed me told me stories about combat in Angola. He kept order in the how very hard people could work when they have goals. I dairy even though I noticed that he initiated most of the bottled milk for a dairy. It required an odd combination of roughhousing. stamina (standing for long periods), boredom (watching I worked a swing shift. I went to work at four each after- endless gallons of milk move down a conveyor belt), and noon and worked until at least eleven when I was required to agility (reaching in to fix something quickly before the stack- disassemble and clean the bottling machine at the end of my shift. If the last truck from Vermont with raw milk ran late I would stay until the milk was processed, bottled, and the equip- ment taken apart and cleaned, which meant sometimes I did not head home until five or six in the morning. I was paid $2.10 an hour, which I thought was great. I also worked six days a week, which might seem a lot except that several of my co- workers (and the person I had temporarily replaced) routinely worked seven days a week. No one in the dairy, except possibly the chemist who checked the milk after it was pasteurized, thought of his or her job as a career. In southern New England and on Continued on page 13 The staff of Smithsonian’s Office acilityof F Management and Reliability works to maintain, repair, and service the historic buildings and grounds of the Smithsonian Institution. Supporting the Department of Botany are LeAnthony Bennett (Supervisor), Jose B. Lobo, Nataya Ross, Keith Pollard, Chaddie Matthews, Feron L. Bazemore, and Carlos Umaña. Not present, Marilyn Blue. (photo by G. Krupnick) Page 2 EDITOR’S NOTE After 21 years in print, The Plant Press has a new look. The partial U.S. federal government shutdown delayed the release of this issue, and most of the content was prepared before the shutdown began. The staff of the Department of Botany is happy to be back at work, fulfilling its mission in being a leader in botanical biodiversity re- search and providing modern responsible stewardship of the national collection. We hope you enjoy the new layout and im- proved design of the newsletter. The editor of the newsletter welcomes and encour- ages feedback, which can be sent to [email protected]. HONORS & AWARDS Museum staff honors its peers The National Museum of Natural His- hours watering, pruning, and trimming tory presented the 2018 Peer Recognition plants in addition to cleaning floors, Awards on December 11. Award recip- equipment and anything else that needed ients are individuals and teams who have attention. Ida Lopez’s devotion is evident given their time and talent to the mu- by bringing the volunteers together, over- seum above and beyond what their jobs seeing the plant care, ensuring all tasks call for, and to those who have done were covered, and providing contracted something that makes a difference in the resources as needed. The greenhouse is a The Plant Press outside community, for the museum, or living and breathing facility and its sys- for the larger Smithsonian community. tems are essential to providing the envi- New Series - Vol. 22 - No. 1 The Peer Recognition Award Committee ronment for the collection to thrive. Chair of Botany is composed of 14 Museum staff Without any professional training in fa- Laurence J. Dorr members representing a cross-section of cilities management, Ken Wurdack as- ([email protected]) the entire museum community. sumed the necessary duties. By EDITORIAL STAFF Ten awards were presented at the cer- troubleshooting systems and partnering emony. Department of Botany’s Ida with SI facilities experts, he helped keep Editor Lopez and Ken Wurdack, and volunteers the greenhouse facility in working order, Gary Krupnick Julia Steirer and Lou Woody received monitored structural and mechanical ([email protected]) the Green Thumb Team Award. The fol- systems, and obtained service and repairs Copy Editors lowing is taken from 2018 Award Pro- when needed. The sacrifice of the team to Robin Everly, Bernadette Gibbons, and gram: save this valuable collection has allowed Rose Gulledge When the unexpected happens and a their fellow curators, and the national The Plant Press is a quarterly publication provided solution is not in sight, unsung cham- and international research communities, free of charge. To receive notification of when new pions often rise and make things right. to continue their research on living pdf issues are posted to the web, please subscribe When the Museum found itself without a plants. The plants housed in this facility to the listserve by sending a message to green house manager, these four individ- are an important reservoir for genome- [email protected] containing only the following in the body of the text: SUBSCRIBE uals stepped up and decided to do what quality tissue, and the conservation of PLANTPRESS-NEWS Firstname Lastname.