Mystery of world's biggest, yuckiest flower solved

Mystery of world's biggest, yuckiest flower solved By Will Dunham
Thu Jan 11, 3:29 PM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It's the world's biggest flower, and maybe the stinkiest, too. And now scientists have used genetic analysis to solve the long-standing mystery of the lineage of the rafflesia flower, known for its blood-red bloom measuring three feet (1 meter) wide and its nauseating stench of rotting flesh.


Writing in the journal Science on Thursday, a team of researchers said rafflesia -- discovered in an 1818 scientific expedition to a Sumatran rain forest -- comes from an ancient family of plants known not for big flowers, but for tiny ones.

In fact, many of its botanical cousins boast flowers just a few millimeters wide.

This family, called Euphorbiaceae, also includes the poinsettia, Irish bells and crops such as the rubber tree, castor oil plant and cassava shrub, the researchers said.

Rafflesia's many odd characteristics long had tripped up scientists trying to figure out where it fit on the botanical tree of life. It is sort of a botanical outlaw -- a parasitic plant that steals nutrients from another plant while deceiving insects into pollinating it.

"They really are a funky plant," Harvard University plant biologist Charles Davis, who led the research, said in an interview.

Rafflesia (pronounced rah-FLEEZ-ee-ah) lives inside the tissue of a tropical vine related to the grapevine, with only its flower visible. It is devoid of leaves, shoots and roots, and does not engage in photosynthesis, the process plants use to exploit the energy from sunlight.

Its flowers can weigh 15 pounds (7 kg). They are a blotchy blood red. They smell like decaying flesh. And they even can emit heat, perhaps mimicking a newly killed animal in order to entice the carrion flies that pollinate it.

'TOTALLY FETID'

"They really do look and smell like rotting flesh. They are a totally fetid, stinking, foul kind of flower. It can be totally repulsive to so many of us. But to the flies that visit these things, it's just delightful," Davis said.

There are various species of rafflesia growing on the floor of rain forests in parts of Southeast Asia, with Borneo the center of its diversity, Davis said.

Davis said its lineage dates back roughly 100 million years to the Cretaceous Period, the last act of the Age of Dinosaurs when flowering plants are believed to have first appeared. The researchers determined that over a span of 46 million years, rafflesia's flowers evolved a 79-fold increase in size before assuming a slower evolutionary pace.

Recent efforts to nail down plant lineages have relied on molecular markers in genes relating to photosynthesis, but that was not possible with rafflesia. The researchers had to scour other parts of its genome for clues.

"These plants are so bizarre that no matter where you put them with any group of plants, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do," Davis said. "But what was surprising was that with all of the options available as close relatives, they are nested within this group of plants with absolutely tiny flowers."

Southern Illinois University plant biologist Daniel Nickrent, who took part in the research, said this deeper understanding of rafflesia might aid people keen to develop larger flowers and fruits.

It was discovered on an expedition led by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who founded the British colony of Singapore, and naturalist Joseph Arnold, who died of malaria on the trip.

Saving the tiger

Saving the tiger

The Malayan tiger is in a perilous but not hopeless state. The endangered species needs ample land, food and protection to flourish. Stories by TAN CHENG LI.

THE Malayan tiger was given “totally protected” status in 1976 – it could be hunted as a game species prior to that. But 30 years later, it remains in a perilous state.

Although the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) insists that tiger numbers, around 500, are not dwindling and still form a viable population, threats have not really eased. Plantations and chainsaws eat away at wild habitats, poachers carry on their slaughter to feed the demand for tiger meat and parts, and we continue putting “rogue” tigers into cages.

If the Malayan tiger is to survive in the wild and avert a fate such as that of the Sumatran rhinos, whose numbers teeter at fewer than 100, they need help.


Tiger pelts and bones seized from a house in Johor Baru in 2003.
Answering the call is a group of government officials, wildlife managers, scientists and conservationists, who recently huddled together for three days at Perhilitan’s Biodiversity Centre in Lanchang, Pahang, to map out our most comprehensive tiger conservation plan – well, most comprehensive because all we had in the past were piecemeal schemes.

A key point that emerged from the meeting is that all is not lost for the Panthera tigris jacksoni. It may be in a perilous, but not hopeless, state.

With improved methods to gauge tiger numbers, a more positive picture has emerged, says wildlife biologist Dr Melvin Gumal. “In the 1990s, we portrayed tigers as being in crisis. But as we get more information, we find that there is potential to say ‘tigers forever’”.

But that hinges on providing them ample land and food, and protection from poachers and farmers. So the workshop ended with a draft plan that centres around these strategies: monitor and protect existing tiger populations in key areas; link up fragmented tiger habitats through forested corridors; eliminate or reduce threats; and minimise the loss of tigers at forest edges due to man-animal clashes.



Tiger refuge

Tiger biologist Dr Kae Kawanishi, whose work in Taman Negara since 1998 revealed a population of 50 to 80 big cats there, is convinced that Malaysia is one country where tigers will survive. Based on available forest habitat and prey species, she says Peninsular Malaysia can harbour some 1,500 tigers.

“The proposed action plan should promote the continued existence of wild landscapes with abundant prey and core protected zones, connected by areas of tiger-friendly rural development and forestry practice,” says Kawanishi.

Because the Malaysian rainforest lacks abundant prey such as the herds of deer seen in the grassy plains of India and Nepal, its tiger densities tend to be low, at one to three animals for every 100sqkm. So to support viable tiger populations, our wild reserves need to be large. And when we protect tigers, we shield all other wildlife.

Kawanishi singles out three “tiger conservation landscapes” or TCL, which are sites big enough and have the best chance of sustaining the species: the Main Range, Greater Taman Negara and the Southern Forest Complex.


Did this tiger, trapped last June, encroach into human territory or did humans encroach into its habitat?
Other forested areas such as state-owned forests, timber concessions, scrubland, riverine forest and agricultural plots, should not be omitted from the tiger protection plan since they too harbour tigers and other wildlife.

To safeguard tigers found outside protected reserves and wildlife sanctuaries, wildlife managers plan to rely on the National Physical Plan (NPP), as it will create the Central Forest Spine, a tract of forest traversing the length of the peninsula. Its function is to link isolated forests with sheltered reserves to form a larger green haven that will ultimately safeguard water catchments and biodiversity.

Although deemed a useful conservation tool, the NPP, however, has yet to prove its worth partly due to poor implementation. It may be a statutory document which must be complied with but state governments have ignored it. For instance, Perak is logging the Temenggor forest reserve, which the NPP listed as an “environmentally sensitive area”.

Furthermore, the document lacks specifics. So, where to place the forested corridors will entail more studies. Also, many forests have been earmarked for logging and development, thus hampering the Central Forest Spine plan.



Keeping tigers at bay

When plantations and livestock farms march right up to tiger country, attacks on humans and livestock – scientists call these “human-tiger conflict” – become inevitable. Three known conflict hotspots are Hulu Perak-Sungai Siput, Jeli-Kuala Krai-Gua Musang and Dungun-Kelantan. In cases of human fatalities, wildlife rangers have had to shoot the animal. Trapped tigers, meanwhile, end up in Malacca Zoo or Taiping Zoo, where they will forever remain captive.

To mitigate such conflicts, Perhilitan and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have worked with villagers in Jeli, Kelantan, and Jerangau Barat, Terengganu, relying on measures as simple as confining livestock in pens at night and keeping estates weed-free so that tigers have no hiding place. But many villages in conflict sites have not benefited from such attention as the projects depend on available funds.

In the long term, keeping plantations away from tiger territories as well as keeping a sizeable buffer between plantations and forests, seem the logical and easiest solutions – but this wise approach to landuse planning remains elusive.

Stressing the importance of buffers, Kelantan Perhilitan director Pazil Abdul Patah says such a zone will help prevent encroachment into wild areas. “Logging roads, for instance, often give easier access for poachers,” he says.

Often overlooked is the role of prey species in tiger conservation. Tigers could be venturing into plantations for their meals simply because the forest could no longer feed them. Their usual prey, the sambar deer and wild boars, could have been overhunted. This may be the case in Jeli, which saw 45 cases of tiger attacks between 1999 and 2004. Camera trapping work by WWF never captured any photos of deer although they are among the more common rainforest mammals.

A shrinking prey base may pose an even greater threat to tigers than loss of habitat and poaching. If tigers cannot feed themselves and their cubs, their numbers will surely plunge. Some studies have suggested that the loss of prey was what decimated the Bali, Caspian and Javan tigers. If indeed the same threat looms over the Malayan tiger, Perhilitan will have to consider ending legal game hunting.


Four of the 22 wild tigers in Malacca Zoo, destined to a life in captivity.
Halt the trade

With the South China tiger population almost decimated, poachers now target Malayan tigers to meet China’s unabated appetite for tiger meat and parts. Laws exist but the illegal trade will stop only when we muster the will to enforce them.

In a survey of 99 traditional medicine shops in the country in 2004, Traffic, a group that monitors the international wildlife trade, found over half offering products purporting to contain parts of protected wildlife, including the tiger’s.

“Many of these actually contain fake tiger products but they are fuelling demand for the real thing,” says Traffic programme officer Chris Shepherd.

Last year, Traffic found restaurants throughout the country serving wild meat, including tiger meat. Shepherd’s investigations in Laos reveal Malaysia to be a major source of wildlife. Dealers there claim to get supplies of pangolins, freshwater turtles, snakes, long-tailed macaques and tiger meat and parts from Malaysia.

Indeed, foreign poachers have been hard at work in our forests and parks. “We have found camps stocked with boxes of food and medical supplies. So you can imagine how long the poachers intend to stay in the forest,” says Perhilitan law and enforcement director Misliah Mohamad Basir.

Countering criticisms of poor policing by Perhilitan, she says scanty information has hampered enforcement work. But with the help of the Army, Perhilitan has nabbed 75 poachers (all Thais except for five Cambodians) since 2002.

Of the 3,612 violations of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 between 2001 and 2005, only eight related to tigers. It is believed that most poaching goes undetected. Last June, Thai Police in Bangkok confiscated illegal wildlife parts, including the remains of six tigers, from the cargo of a Thai Airways flight from the Thai-Malaysian border town of Haadyai. Could the animals be ours? Misliah says no information could be obtained from Thai authorities.



Plan in action

Because of the multi-faceted threats, tiger survival lies not only within wildlife conservation agencies. Shepherd echoes a common view when he urges for more inter-agency co-operation: “Enforcement agencies other than Perhilitan, such as the Customs, should be vigilant against wildlife smuggling and view it as priority.”

Finally, we should be ruthless when dealing with poachers and violators. “Small fines and penalties aren’t deterrent,” says Shepherd.

The proposed tiger conservation plan reinstates what many know needs to be done to stop the slaughter of the Malayan tiger. But as always, the outcome depends on what exactly is put into action. Meanwhile, many other issues warrant attention: What do we do about tigers kept in zoos, theme parks and private menageries? Should Perhilitan issue permits for displays of tigers in shopping malls? Should we continue trapping “rogue” tigers and send them to zoos?

The future survival of the Malayan tiger hinges on us providing them with more than space, food and protection; we need to respect them as another species on earth, just like us.

How you can help
Support the conservation efforts of MNS, WWF and MYCAT.

Protect tiger habitat by opposing indiscriminate development and illegal logging of forests.

Do not buy tiger parts or products claiming to contain tiger parts or derivatives.

Do not patronise restaurants serving tiger meat or meat from illegally acquired species.

Do not support zoos, private collections or exhibitions that display illegally acquired animals.

Write to the authorities and the press opposing policy decisions that hamper tiger conservation.

Notify Perhilitan (% 03-9075 2872) if you have information on anyone selling or trapping tigers and other protected species, or trading in their parts and products.
Source: Malaysian Conservation Alliance for Tigers (MYCAT)




To learn more about tigers, go to: www.savethe tigerfund.org, www.21stcenturytiger.org, www.tigers.ca, www.felidae.org, www.savethetigerfund.org, www.21stcenturytiger.org and www.tigers.ca.

Dung-Ho

Cover story: Dung-Ho
07 Jan 2007


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A young researcher whose heart is as big as the animals she’s determined to save lets JESSICA LIM tag along on her unusual quest.

AFTER months of battling shin-high, leech-filled mud, dense undergrowth, wasps and a kind of poisonous tree sap that breaks skin into raw blisters, the petite girl squatted happily by the treasure she sought.
It was a shimmering, lustrous pile of elephant dung.
"Wow. Very fresh. So nice," said elephant researcher Cynthia Boon as she broke into a smile.

Boon pinched a bit of the human head-sized bolus and sniffed it.
The team whipped out their dung-assessing gear — a GPS reader, compass, measuring tape and identification tag — and began noting how far it was decayed, the size and exact location.
As coming too close to the actual animal is rather dangerous, Boon explained that the team keeps a safe distance and looks out for the next best indicator — its fibrous poop.
The data will be compiled and analysed under the country’s first nationwide elephant survey, called the CITES Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) programme.
It is a Department of Wildlife and National Parks (Perhilitan) and Wildlife Conservation Society Malaysia project, sponsored in part by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
It will find out how elephants are distributed in Malaysia, paving the way for a sorely needed elephant master plan.
The plan must strike the delicate balance between the needs of elephants and their human neighbours.
And the plan must be hatched soon, says Perhilitan. Nearly one in five wildlife conflicts reported to the department have to do with elephants.
This makes them second only to long-tailed macaques, which account for more than half. The department receives about 730 jumbo-related complaints a year.
"They may not be highest in the number of complaints, but they are definitely the most expensive wildlife conflict to handle," said Perhilitan’s Salman Saaban.
Salman, the senior assistant director of the department’s Biological Diversity Conservation Division, said that the cost of translocating a single elephant was RM41,000.
They have moved 336 elephants since 1974, an average of one per month.
"The truth is, we cannot say whether we’re putting too many elephants in one place. Maybe the area is over-full, we don’t know. That's why we need this study.
"Until this study is done, we’ll just have to translocate ‘problem’ elephants the way we always done."
It has been seven months since porcelain-skinned Boon, 26, traded the cushy comfort of her hometown in Kulai, Johor, for the dank, foreboding jungles of Taman Negara.
The only child of a contractor dad and hairdresser mum, Boon is one of three young women biologists who are leading teams of Orang Asli, local guides and wildlife rangers into the last of our country’s surviving elephant territories.
"They are our iron ladies," said programme co-ordinator Dr Jephte Sompud.
"We had people from all over the world apply for the job. Sad to say, none of the men had what it took.
"But these three, they’ve got the experience, they’ve got the guts and they’ve got the spirit."
The women only come out of the deep jungles once a month. When in there, they're unreachable by phone, exposed to all manner of wild beasts and surrounded mostly by men.
They sleep in tents and toilet is behind any thick clump of bushes.
The other two biologists, Nurul Fatana Samsuri and Nurulhuda Zakaria, both 23, declined to be photographed.
Their parents, confided Nurulhuda, had a tough time coming to terms with the fact that their darling daughters were risking their lives for hairy, trumpeting giants that could trample them without remorse.
In theory, the plan of action is simple.
First, the team asks local folk to point out where the elephants are. They follow the jumbo footsteps closely and take note of where they hang out.
They then take a huge grid map of the park and mark out systematic horizontal lines on areas within the animals' projected home range.
They must walk along these lines and count the pieces of poop they find.
"Ha, ha. That’s in theory," laughed the bubbly Boon.
Those transect lines, so neat on paper, are very rarely that straightforward on the ground.
"There is no trail to follow, and whether it’s a raging river, a 60-degree incline, or an area infested with semut api (fiery fire ants), the team has to take one determined step after the another to cover the two kilometres.
Recently, after a two-day hike into the park from the Taman Negara Merapoh entrance, Boon and her two Orang Asli guides, Mat Daling and Soufi, stood at the base of an almost vertical incline.
According to their predetermined markings on the map, they were supposed to scale it.
Their progress for the past two hours had been slow. The two young locals had worked non-stop, furiously chopping a path through tangled and thorny undergrowth.
Often, all that stood between them and a death-inviting plunge into the ravine below were some scraggly trees which they clung to for dear life.
And now, scratched, muddy, exhausted and not even halfway into the transect, they were stuck.
A detour to the left and right confirmed that the rock face went on indefinitely. An attempt to clamber up the incline brought down a shower of rocks.
And they hadn’t found a single piece of dung.
What more, rain clouds had gathered ominously. Boon’s left big toe-nail, which had developed a persistent fungus from the constant damp conditions, was torn and throbbing.
"It’s all right," said Boon — a phrase that would be repeated many times over the next few days, weeks and months.
She adjusted her cap and glasses and joked: "It’s not wasted. At least we know there are no elephants here. The only reason an elephant would climb up there is to commit suicide."


Jumbo-sized shoes to fill

COMPLETELY blind in one eye, with vision fading fast in the other, the 70-plus-year-old elephant was glad her employers finally gave her the golden trunk-shake.
Towards the end of her working life, the old dame could hardly walk in a straight line anymore. Mountains, once easy walking, now drained her too easily.
Her keepers said they even saw tears in her eyes when she was gently pushed to deliver her services for one more day.
Mek Bunga the guide elephant would have liked to retire much earlier, but she was an expert in her field. There was just too much work to do and no one to do it.
She is the go-between, pacifier and big momma to frisky younger elephants who have been plucked out of their jungle homes and planted in new ones.
When an elephant persistently disrupts villages, the best strategy so far is to sedate them, transport them over miles of land and sea, and help them adapt to a more food-abundant area, said the Department of Wildlife and National Park’s (Perhilitan) Salman Saaban.
The senior assistant director of the department’s Biological Conservation Division said the job needed two trained elephants to sandwich the sedated wild one as it stumbled though deep jungles inaccessible by land transport.
To discourage the wild elephant from finding its way home, the animal is usually transported over bodies of water, like in the Tasik Kenyir area or in the Belum Forest.
Every year, 12 to 14 elephants are translocated.
Now that Mek Bunga the matriarch has been let loose to contentedly chew greens in the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary, there are only two guides left and they’re both over 60 years old.
And Lokimalar and Che Mek, says Perhilitan’s Siti Hawa Yatim, may have less than a year to go before they find their job too demanding.
"Without these guide elephants, translocation would be impossible. Don’t tell me you want to pull the elephants yourself!" said Siti Hawa, the department's Biodiversity Conservation Division director.
"Besides, the trained elephants also comfort the new one. It will think ‘hey, at least I got gang here’."
The department had relied on Mek Bunga and Che Mek, both Thai elephants, since adopting this strategy in 1976. Indian-born Lokimalar was roped in recently to take the place of ailing Mek Bunga.
A younger elephant from Myanmar, Myan Thon Pian, was thought to be able to fill the gigantic shoes, but the plan didn’t work.
"The senior elephants rejected Myan Thon Pian. We don’t know why. They just refused to co-operate. It’s not that simple."

National Elephant Conservation Centre’s Nasharuddin Othman said it wasn’t easy to come by trained elephants, and training local ones was out of the question.
"In Thailand, they have domesticated elephants for 2,000 years," said Nasharuddin.
"An elephant needs to be tame for at least eight generations before it can be trained to do this kind of work. Our elephants are very wild."
The situation is getting desperate, said Siti Hawa. The department had been trying for one year to get in new ones, but efforts have not been fruitful so far.