Silverswords and Lobeliads: Restoring Hawaii’s Marvels of Evolution

Many Voices, Many Hands

Patty Moriyasu & Jaime Enoka (Volcano Rare Plant Facility) Kealii Bio (Bio-Logical)Colleen Cole (Three Mountain Alliance)Rhonda Loh, Sierra McDaniel, Mark Wasser & Tim Tunison (Hawaii

Volcanoes National Park) Lyman Perry, Steve Bergfeld & Lisa Hadway (Hawaii Division of

Forestry & Wildlife) Nick Agorastos, Ian Cole, Kualii Camara & Tanya Rubenstein (Hawaii

Natural Area Reserves System)Ane Bakutis & Josh VanDeMark (Hawaii Plant Extinction Prevention

Program)Namaka Whitehead (Kamehameha Schools)Marie Bruegmann (US Fish & Wildlife Service) Rick Warshauer (US Geological Survey)

silversword lineageHawaiian

Hawaiianlobeliad lineage

Argyroxiphium kauense

Outplanting in Kahuku

Balancing Founder Representation

Maternal founder0 4020

0

75

150

Num

ber

of s

eedlings

Kahuku Site 1 (7,129 seedlings total)

10 30

Kapapala

Kapapala founders

Silversword Reintroduction

Ka’u silversword• 10,211 seedlings from 73 founders in

multiple sites (Kahuku source population)• 11,060 seedlings from 96 founders in

multiple sites (Kapapala source population)

Waiakea bog

Waiakea and Ka’u silverswords

Waiakea and Ka’u silversword seedlings

Silversword Reintroduction

Ka’u silversword• 10,211 seedlings from 73 founders in

multiple sites (Kahuku source population)• 11,060 seedlings from 96 founders in

multiple sites (Kapapala source population)Waiakea silversword• 5,673 seedlings from 39 founders in

multiple sites (Waiakea source population)

Seedling recruitment

Clermontia peleanaseedlings

Air layering

Lobeliad Reintroduction

• 4,826 seedlings from 4 founders in multiple sites

• all 7 known founders now in the managed breeding program at the Volcano Rare Plant Facility (5 of them via rooted cuttings from air layering)

Lobeliad Reintroduction

Other lobeliads with fewer than 50 remnant plants now reintroduced in the Three Mountain Alliance area:

Cyanea hamatiflora – 4,218 seedlingsCyanea shipmanii – 1,542 seedlingsCyanea stictophylla – 1,124 seedlingsDelissea undulata – 825 seedlings

Federal, State, and private lands cooperatively managed as part of the Three Mountain Alliance now total 451,750 ha (1,116,300 ac)

adaptive radiation

Hawaiian archipelago

colonizing ancestor

time

nrDNA Phylogeny

26 nucleotide substitutions bootstrap value = 100%

Baldwin & Robichaux 1995; Baldwin 2003, unpublished data

D. ciliolataD. scabraD. arboreaD. linearisD. menziesiiD. platyphyllaD. reticulataD. waianapanapaensisD. herbstobataeD. sherffianaD. laxaD. knudseniiD. pauciflorulaD. microcephalaD. plantagineaD. waialealaeD. kalalauensisD. syndeticaD. imbricataD. kenwoodiiD. laevigataD. latifoliaD. paleataD. raillardioidesW. gymnoxiphiumW. hobdyiA. caliginisA. grayanumA. kauenseA. sandwicenseA. virescens

(ETS+ITS)

Silversword Genome

• recently sequenced the complete transcriptomes of species in the silversword lineage*

• beginning to unravel a trove of insights about the silversword genome, including those of potential relevance to our silversword reintroduction efforts

*Barker, Baldwin & Robichaux, unpublished data

adaptive radiation

Hawaiian archipelago

colonizing ancestor

time

Kids & the Future