Project 1. Dispersal traits and phylogenetic relationships in Andean Compositae: What makes a species widely or narrowly distributed?

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1 Science Summer Internships 6 to 8 week placements June to September 2017 We are offering a range of exciting voluntary internship placements across Kew s Science Directorate. These placements provide training in research and professional skills, as well as work experience within an internationally esteemed science and conservation organisation. Please see the role description for more information. During your application, you will be asked to indicate up to two projects in which you are most interested. Project 1. Dispersal traits and phylogenetic relationships in Andean Compositae: What makes a species widely or narrowly distributed? Host department: Biodiversity Informatics and Spatial Analysis Supervisor: Carolina Tovar Mountain regions are important centres of endemism but they are under serious threat from climate change and human activities. This results in natural and anthropogenic fragmentation, which may have a negative impact on plant dispersal and thus biodiversity. One way to analyse how important dispersal is for mountain species is to test whether traits related to dispersal have an influence on the distribution range. Previous studies have shown that growth form, seed size and the dispersal syndrome are among the most important factors influencing dispersal distance for plants. However, a variety of fruit appendages exists within dispersal syndromes. For example, within Compositae, one of the best represented taxa in mountains, the fruit appendages such as the pappus or hooks have different shapes and dimensions. The potential effect of the appendages dimensions may play an important role in dispersal itself and in turn in the distribution range. This project asks the question: What is the role of seed size, growth form and the dimension of fruit appendages in the distribution range of Compositae species? Hypothesis 1 Species with wider distributions tend to be taller, have smaller seeds and have similar fruit structure dimensions where phylogenetic relationships have been accounted for Hypothesis 2 Species with narrower distributions may have evolved recently and their range may not have been influenced by specific traits advantageous for dispersal. The project focuses in the high elevation grasslands (>3000 m above sea level) of the Tropical Andes in collaboration with the GLORIA Andes network. The student will mostly help with data collection: Literature review for Andean Compositae species to: 1) Extract trait data, 2) Identify useful plants Measurement of the seed and fruit appendages from pictures

2 The student will also receive training in: Introduction to species distribution models Database management Project 2. Opening up Kew s Herbarium through digitisation and crowdsourcing. Host department: Collections Supervisor: Sarah Phillips Herbarium specimens provide the evidence of what plants exist, where they grow and when they were collected. They provide the basis for modelling plant distribution over time, and act as vouchers that ensure plants are named accurately. However, the majority of specimen information that researchers require is not available via the internet and thus largely inaccessible to the global scientific community. There is a growing demand and increased user expectation for digital access to herbarium specimen images and associated data. Currently approximately 13% of the estimated 7 million herbarium specimens at Kew have been digitally catalogued and only 8% imaged. One way in which Kew is seeking to enhance the pace of data-sharing is by asking the public to help with the huge task of transcribing the herbarium specimen label data. Through this project we will continue to test this method of gathering data via crowdsourcing platforms, interacting with volunteers through the online forums. The quality of data that Kew has captured through its crowdsourcing projects will be assessed, different methods will be evaluated and improvements to future crowdsourcing projects suggested. We will also investigate and trial new minimal data capture digitisation workflows, determining the extra resource cost required for the capture of additional data fields to determine the most efficient digitisation workflows. This project will directly contribute to Kew s Science Strategic Output Digitising the Collections. Herbarium specimen handling Digitisation (imaging and label data transcription) Data management Quality assessment of data Public engagement skills Report writing Project 3. Plant-fungal interactions in Alpine ecosystems Host department: Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology Supervisors: Laura Martinez Suz and Martin Bidartondo Despite their importance, alpine ectomycorrhizal fungi are poorly known and the majority remain undocumented and undescribed. During the summer of 2017 we will be carrying out fieldwork in the Alps collecting roots from three alpine plants (Dryas octopetala, Salix herbacea and Bistorta vivipara).

3 Our aim is to investigate the effect of biotic (e.g. host identity, genetic variability and distribution) and abiotic (e.g. altitude, plant and soil chemistry) factors that affect the diversity and distribution of the mycorrhizal communities that associate to these three plants in the European Alps. The student will help to: 1. process the mycorrhizal roots selecting individual mycorrhizas 2. carry out DNA analyses to identify them 3. capture the morphological diversity of the mycorrhizas by taking photographs under the dissecting microscope Light microscopy Root sorting Mycorrhizal identification DNA extractions PCR Sanger sequencing Project 4. Assessing the extinction risk of threatened orchids of Zambia Host department: Conservation Science Supervisors: Ruth Bone and Serene Hargreaves As part of a Darwin Initiative funded project on trade and conservation of wild edible orchids (Principal Investigator Ruth Bone), Serene Hargreaves led a Red List workshop in Zambia in October To our knowledge, this was the first IUCN Red List training course held in Zambia focused on flora. We aim to complete additional assessments for terrestrial orchids of Zambia that are imminently threatened by unsustainable harvesting. Regional groups of workshop participants have expressed interest in continuing work on assessments, developing their Red Listing skills initially focused on imminently threatened edible orchids and ultimately, generating a Red List of Zambia's flora. A lack of suitable specimen data significantly hampers this work. The information needed to assess these species is locked in Kew s unique herbarium collections. The proposed project will enable a Summer intern to gain hands-on experience of Red List methods in RBG Kew s Plant Assessment Unit (PAU), while contributing to a dynamic project responding to imperilled wildlife and vulnerable rural livelihoods. The intern will database and geo-reference herbarium specimen data, research species, and draft Red List assessments for review by regional Zambian workshop groups. Training and supervision in Red List methodology will be provided by the PAU team. To maximise output from the project, we seek an intern with previous experience of working with herbarium specimens/natural history collections, and existing skills in geo-referencing methods. Incountry assessment review workshops will be undertaken before final submission to IUCN. Knowledge of herbarium specimen handling Training on the use of Kew s library and other resources to gather research on species Experience of IUCN s Red List Assessment process Training on the latest georeferencing tools and procedures

4 Project 5. Project title: Human dimensions in plant invasion Host department: Conservation Science Supervisor: Andrew Budden The project will build up a profile of one (or more as time allows) of the 35 worst invasive plant species in the world in order to establish the human context surrounding plant invasion. Utilising the resources contained within the herbarium and library at Kew and supplementing these data with other datasets, a map of the distribution of the chosen species will be produced, both in its native and alien range. The locality data for each record will be evaluated to understand its value in mapping the range and this will contribute to work focussed on analysing the usefulness of current records of invasive species for mapping. The resultant map will be analysed against the Global Human Footprint 2009 map and this data will be used to quantify the role that human disturbance plays in the invasion process. This will enable comparison with other invasive species and assist with prioritisation of management for those species having most effect on pristine habitats. Additionally, the intern will help build a literature profile for their chosen species. This will involve collating and assessing the publications where the species is mentioned in order to understand how the research focus changes over the course of time, from species discovery and utilisation to identification as a problem species and control efforts. This will feed into wider work that is aiming to establish patterns in the human perception of invasive plant species and will help contribute to work on Kew s State of the World s Plants publication. Databasing and geo-referencing of herbarium specimens and other records Insight into the processes concerning systematic reviews Experience of building global datasets Knowledge about their chosen species and invasion biology Project 6. Recent origin and evolution of the hyper diverse flora of Chocó biogeographic region Host department: Identification and Naming Supervisors: Oscar Alejandro Pérez Escobar Species richness is highly uneven across the globe, with both species-poor and mega-diverse areas. Biodiversity hotspots could be areas of environmental stability where species accumulate through time or alternatively areas of major landscape change that directly or indirectly promote rapid species diversification. The Chocó biogeographic region is one of the world s five most diverse regions, where several Neotropical plant groups form diversity centres. Notwithstanding such overwhelming richness, very little is known about the origin, distribution and macro-evolutionary dynamics of Chocó Flora. This is likely due to the pervasive lack of floristic studies and sampling across the region, as well as wellresolved, strongly supported phylogenies from Chocoan centred lineages.

5 To address these issues, this project aims to investigate in time and space the origin of the most diverse lineages of the Chocó flora, and ask whether: 1. the Chocoan lowland forest endemics are derived from lowland pre-adapted migrants (e.g. Central America, Amazonia), or immigrants that reached the region from cool localities such as Northern Andes; 2. the origin, direction and frequency of these migrations and lowland/highland lineage turnover; 3. whether the rise of the Andes affected net diversification rates of Chocoan lineages. To achieve this, we will first data-mine DNA sequences from NCBI repositories of selected lineages distributed across the Neotropics that are particularly well represented in Chocó region. The information here produced will provide an excellent overview of the current sampling gap, and will be useful to determine target lineages that are particularly under-represented in DNA repositories. Botanical identification skills of the plant families selected for the study A wide range of phylogenetic analyses such as DNA matrix construction; tree inference (Maximum Likelihood, Parsimony and Bayesian approaches); molecular clock and biogeographical analyses Bioinformatics skills basic knowledge in the software packages R, Python and Unix Project 7. Having a good thyme: can bees self-medicate? Host department: Natural Capital and Plant Health Supervisors: Phil Stevenson and Hauke Koch Bees provide crucial ecosystem services as pollinators, yet their populations are under threat by multiple stressors including loss of floral resources and diseases. While nectar and pollen of plants are crucial for nutrition of bees, they could also reduce disease loads via antimicrobial metabolites. Recent work has shown that the nectar of thyme plants (Thymus vulgaris) contains the antimicrobial compound thymol. Experiments in vitro and in laboratory feeding trials of bumble bees have demonstrated that thymol inhibits the common virulent unicellular gut parasite Crithidia bombi. This summer project will experimentally test if free-flying bumblebee colonies can reduce parasite loads when allowed to forage on thyme plants. We will also test if bees can preferentially visit plants with thymol in their nectar when infected or self-medicate. Experiments will be conducted in June and July with bumblebee colonies foraging in polytunnels already set up at Kew. The student will infect bumblebee colonies with parasites and assess parasite loads of bees after foraging for two weeks in polytunnels with or without thymol producing nectar plants. In addition, foraging observation data of infected and uninfected bumblebee colonies will be collected to test self-medication behaviour. To assess the presence and concentration of thymol and other metabolites in the nectar and pollen foraged on by the experimental bees in polytyunnels, pollen and nectar samples will be collected and chemically analysed.

6 Chemical analyses: Collection of nectar and pollen samples Extraction of plant metabolites Identification and quantification of plant metabolites by High Performance Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS) Experimental work with pollinators: Maintenance of bumble bee colonies Behavioural observations of foraging behaviour Parasitology: In vitro culturing of parasites in artificial media Preparation of parasite inocula and infection of bees Microscopy to detect and quantify parasite loads For further information about any of these projects, please