Comment
Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Signal more diversity just waiting to be discovered, says Daniel Nickrent, a professor of plant biology at Cornell University, U.S., who wasn’t part of Cheek’s team.In 2020, Nickrent described a new species of Gymnosiphon — G. syceorosensis — from Mount Hamiguitan in the Philippines. It was the second Gymnosiphon to be identified in the Philippines in recent years.Nickrent and his team were on a general plant-collecting expedition, and were unable to stay longer to observe pollinators, seed dispersers or “any other factors that impinge upon the life history of this species,” he says.It underscores the importance of protecting Boyboyba so Cheek and his Guinean colleagues can study the Fon gymnosiphon in its natural habitat.The Boyboyba Forest is home to four other species of mycoheterotrophic plants, including two other gymnosiphons, making it the site with the highest diversity of these plants in West Africa. It also holds the biggest global population of a critically endangered liana unique to Guinea, Keita deniseae, that has evolved different types of climbing hooks to help it grapple its way up trees.Boyboyba is expected to yield additional plants new to science, Cheek and his co-authors write in their recent paper describing the Fon gymnosiphon. Range-restricted animal species potentially new to science are also being researched in Boyboyba, they write.The Pic de Fon forest supports endangered chimpanzee populations as well as hundreds of other rare and endemic species of fauna and flora. Image courtesy of Rio Tinto.The biological richness, and fragility, of the Pic de Fon was
Add Comment