What is taxonomy?

I am reading this paper by Ungricht et al. (2005) and it points out the "importance of sound taxonomy... is a prerequisite in conservation evaluation in general." (page 221) There appears to be a trend whereby the estimates of endemicity would drop "after taxonomic revisions across major regions as those in the Flora Malesiana, encompassing several centres of endemism."

This sounds entirely logical, as there can only be two outcomes when one studies two sites of endemism. One is that he realizes many of the species that are studied by different individuals and are given different names are actually the same, the other, is that they're different. So the one doing the confirmation, I presume this is called taxonomic revision, would be the one who consolidates, compares and classifies. More likely than not, some species would be classified as the same species.

Is this why these revisional studies are so important? There has been revisional studies done for Asian, Australasian and African members of the Ficus genus but not yet any for the neotropical Ficus flora. Taxonomist like Vazquez Avila and Berg are currently working on the neotropical revisions (Berg 1989).

So what is taxonomy?

Genesis 2:19-20
Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

1 Kings 4:33
He(Solomon) described plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also taught about animals and birds, reptiles and fish.

The naming and describing of life?

According to A Dictionary of Botany by George Usher (1966), taxonomy is " the science of classifying living things".

According to The Penguin Dictionary of Botany by Allen Lane (1984), taxonomy is "the study of the principles and practices of classification. The term taxonomy strictly applied to the study and description of variation in the natural world and the subsequent compilation of classifications...
In dealing with the flora of an area several phases can be recognized. The first phase is mainly concerned with identification and is sometimes referred to as exploratory or pioneer. Study of many tropical areas is still in this stage. Once material is better known and taxonomists have a good understanding of local and regional variation of the species it moves into the consolidation phase. These two phases are jointly described by some as 'alpha' taxonomy. Once cytological or biosystematic data are available these can be added to existing data. Taxonomy in which all available evidence is considered is described as the encyclopaedic phase or 'omega' taxonomy."

Ah, this is interesting right?

References

Berg, C.C. 1989. Classification and distribution of Ficus. Experientia 45:605-611

Ungricht, S., J. Rasplus and F. Kjellberg. 2005. Extinction threat evaluation of endemic fig trees of New Caledonia: priority assessment for taxonomy and conservation with herbarium collections. Biodiversity and Conservation 14: 205-232

Fig trees on St. John's Island

From the "Singapore's Heritage Tree Register". The ficus heritage species. Take a look at those found in St. John's island!

I believe I saw the one at Duxton Plain too. Very strong and mighty.



I saw these trees with the "Ficus superba" tags at St. John's Island during a camp. The trees at St. John's were very mature and beautiful. Really like the Tembusus that abound.

This is one of them.





I'm not sure what are these. They look like stranglers to me.

E. J. H. Corner

Mabberley, D. J. (1999) Edred John Henry Corner, C. B. E. 12 January 1906-14 September 1996. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society

"Important in his later career was the interest that he took in figs (Ficus, Moraceae), of which he published preparatory accounts of some of the Malayan species in 1933 and 1939."

"At Cambridge, Corner built on his account of figs in Wayside trees, elaborating a classification of the genus Ficus, although his account of the Malesian species remains unpublished beacuse he fell out with the editors of Flora Malesiana. Some of his type specimens are deposited in the Cambridge University herbarium. In concentrating on so large a genus, he saw clearly, as he did in his seed work, the 'grades' of classification and the importance of clades that underpin modern phylogenetic work."

"In figs, his greatest alpha-taxonomic group, it was the development of the leaf venation that opened up new insights."

Rather than just quoting from the paper, perhaps it's better for me to interpret and analyze. As I looking through the Flora Malesiana for figs, keep coming across Corner's name, so decided to read his biography and I was captivated.

He is a man who devoted his life to furthering knowledge. The paper helped introduce me to the man behind the papers and books and names. Through the paper, you could see Corner as a son, student, as a botanist, Professor and conservationist.

Distribution of World's Ficus

http://www.britannica.com/ebc/art-26/Floral-kingdoms-subkingdoms-and-major-regions-of-the-world



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecozone


2: p4

"The genus is pantropical, extending to subtropical (or warm temperate) regions. It comprises c. 735 species, of which c. in America, c. 105 in Africa (continent, Madagascar and other Indian Ocean islands, and the Arabian Peninsula), and the others in the Asian-Australasian region; 367, including five introduced ones, occur in Malesia..."

How many in Asian-Australasian region then? 735 - 105 - 367 = 263

pantropical = occurring or distributed throughout the tropical regions of the Earth

Species Extinction and Invasive Species

Since my project is about what makes one ficus species invasive and what makes another at high risk of extinction, it would be good to first discuss what is invasiveness and what is extinction. :)

I am reading "Essentials of Ecology" by G. Tyler Miller, Jr. (2007) Fourth Edition. Thomson Learning. It is a good textbook for fun and casual, layperson reading. A lot of beautiful pictures and not very dense in content, straightforward and simple. In stark contrast to another textbook - Ecology, Concepts & Applications by Manuel C. Molles, Jr. that is very text dense.

Species Extinction

There are three types of extinction. Local extinction occurs when a species is no longer found in an area but is still found elsewhere in the world. Ecological extinction occurs when so few members of a species are left that the remaining members are no longer able to perform their ecological functions in their communities. Biological extinction occurs when a species is no longer found on planet earth. Biological extinction is permanent!

Besides being extinct, a species can also be endangered or threatened. An endangered species has so few individual survivors that it could soon become extinct; while a threatened species (aka vulnerable species) is still abundant in its natural range but is declining in numbers and could soon be endangered and/or extinct.

Certain characteristics predisposes a species to extinction. These characteristics could be innate, for example a low reproductive rate or dependent on external factors such as presence of predators and pollinators.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) - also known as the World Conservation Union publishes annual Red Lists, which is a list of the world's threatened species. This is where I go to to find my threatened ficus species.

"Scientists also use models to estimate the risk of a particular species becoming endangered or extinct within a certain period of time, based on factors such as trends in population size, changes in habitat availability, interactions with other species, and genetic factors."

Is this what I'm doing?

Invasive Species

There are two types of introduced species: deliberately introduced species and accidentally introduced species. Deliberately introduced species are nonnative species that are brought in to provide food, medicine and other benefits. For example, ficus species are very popular ornamental plants. They are thought not be spread, due to their need to specific wasps as pollinators. However, wasps can travel as well and many ornamental figs have become weeds. Accidentally introduced species are unwanted guests that come in many ways. Wild pets might escape peoples' homes. Cargo ships discharge their ballast water containing nonnatives. Earthworms hide among soil when vegetables are shipped. Our local infamous changeable lizards take the Malayan Railway from Thailand to Tanjong Pagar railway station.

There also is a distinction between alien species and invasive species. I believe only when an alien/nonnative species invades an ecosystem, then they are considered invasives.

Such invasive species are called weeds, though a weed is not necessarily invasive. I believe a weed is any unwanted plant. There is a quote that goes "a weed is but an unloved flower" but this is likely a romanticized statement. To ecologists and conservationist, a weed, if its invasive, is a ruthless invader that should be eliminated at all costs. For me, I get my ficus weed species from The Global Compendium of Weeds.

So here is a short introduction to this enormously large topic! :)

Habit of Figs

Growth form of ficus species:
Mechanically independent plants
a) trees
b) treelets
c) shrubs
Most forest-forms occur in this genus, except herbaceous (a herb is a non-woody, small plant) ones.

Mechanically dependent plants
a) climbers
b) hemi-epiphytes
"The seeds germinate on branch, trunk, or aerial root, in a crevice or hole, often brought there by ants. Because of the need of light for germination, seedlings are in general found at about 20-25m above the forest-floor." (2; p23)
- Are stranglers a subset of hemi-epiphytes? Those hemis that managed to kill their hosts?
c)hemi-epilithic (found on rock surface or man-made walls)

Epiphyte (air plant) - A plant that has no roots in the soil and lives above the ground surface, supported by another plant or object. It obtains its nutrients from the air, rain water, and from organic debris on its support.

Liana (liane) - A long-stemmed woody climbing plant that grows from ground level to the canopy of trees.
-Are lianas climbers?

I am trying to make sense of the growth-forms of the Ficus genus. Because it was so confusing reading "African fig trees and fig wasps" by C.C. Berg and J.T. Wiebes. This is especially so for the mechanically dependent plants (those that lean or climb on other plants). You hear things like climber, epiphytic, hemi-epiphytic, hemi-epilithic, secondarily terrestrial, lianescent, epilithic scrambler, terrestrial etc., so what are the definitions for these various growth forms? Are there overlaps?

How should I categorise them in my dataset?

Do those categories I have come up with sufficiently cover all life forms in the genus?

Flora Malesiana's treatment of Ficus

Flora Malesiana. Series I, Volume 17/Part 2 (2005) iv + 1-730, by C. C. Berg & E. J. H. Corner

"Contains the taxonomic treatment of Ficus (Moraceae) for Malesia, i.e., the area covering the countries Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea."

"A pantropical genus of terrestrial and hemi-epiphytic trees and shrubs or climbers with a unique inflorescence (syconium, fig). This forms the basis of a unique and complex pollination system requiring flowering phenologies that make mature inflorescences highly important as food source for forest animals. Large-scale economic value is confined to production of indoor and outdoor ornamental trees.

The genus, the largest of the 37 genera of the family, comprises about 735 species worldwide and 367 currently recognised in the Malesian region."

The genus is subdivided into six subgenera:

-Ficus

-Pharmacosycea

-Sycidium

-Sycomorus

-Synoecia

-Urostigma

And look what I found in the foreword!

"Are all botanists crazy? I began to think that anyone who would bother with such a genus as Eurgenia must be a bit off; to say nothing of those who like to play with Ficus." (from a letter of Merrill to Lam, 23 August 1949)

Photo copyright Henriette Kress, http://www.henriettesherbal.com/ (Eugenia uniflora)

Photo copyright Antonie van Den Bos, http://www.aycronto.com/ (Ficus carica)

How to identify a fig-tree?

A guide to the fabulous FIGS of Singapore published by the Singapore Science Centre (2005) by Ng, A et al.. is an excellent layperson introduction to the figs of Singapore. It is very user-friendly and enjoyable to read, even the preface is good. There is a lot of interesting snippets in it, like how the "Banyan Tree" got its name. The English who saw Indian traders and merchants called "banyans" in Hindi, trading under the Ficus benghalensis, associated the huge fig trees with the "banyans," hence the tree got it's name!

The illustrations are beautiful, so are the pictures.

One significant thing I learnt from this book is how to identify a fig tree.

Members from the Moraceae family have
(1) Stipules (i.e., bud-coverings) covering the new buds at ends of twigs
(2) Scar rings on twigs (formed from fallen stipules)
(3) Sap (i.e., white or yellow latex)

What is a fig-tree?

From "Wayside Trees of Malaya" by E. J. H. Corner (1988) 3rd Edition. Kuala Lumpur: United Selangor Press

FIG-TREES

FICUS (Lat., a fig-tree)

Trees with latex: bark generally smooth and entire; twigs marked with a ring-like scar at each node, from the falling off of the conical stipule covering the bud; twigs of small trees often hollow.

Leaves simple or lobed, arranged spirally, alternate or opposite, commonly rather unequal-sided.

Flowers tiny, set inside the fleshy figs, of three kinds: male flowers with 1-5 stamens; female flowers with an ovary and a long style, each setting one seed; gall-flowers like the female but swollen, balloon-like, with a short funnel-shaped style, each containing a fig-wasp, not setting seed; flowers with 3-5 tiny, often wine-red, sepals or merely a cup-shaped calyx.

Fruits as full-grown ripened figs.

About 1000 species, tropical and subtropical, about 500 species in Asia and Australasia; about 100 species in Malaya, lowland and mountain.

Why Ficeae?

Ficeae is the tribe which Ficus, the genus is in. Moraceae is the family.

I had wanted fig, figs, ficus, figwasp and moraceae as my blog address. The first four were already in use and I felt "Moraceae" was not specific enough since my project would be solely on figs. So I searched around till I found that Ficus was in the Ficeae tribe. It is the only genus in the tribe.

I am so excited about my project that I could not help but to make this.

Browsing through the literature on Ficus, I was overwhelmed by the quantity of research done. It either means my job will be easier or my job will be tougher. I hope to see it both ways, so I will not slacken, neither will I be complacent.

Once again, I want to thank my Professor, Prof. Hugh Tan for this opportunity to do this research! It is a chance to search or investigate a topic exhaustively which entices and excites me.

I'm eager to embark on this journey!

Like what Wee Foong said, may it last me all the way through.

May God guide me in all things with all wisdom and love.