In January 2023, Te Papa Botany Curator Heidi Meudt was one of a team of Aotearoa New Zealand botanists and crew who travelled to Motu Maha Auckland Islands to undertake botanical research and make new collections. Here, Heidi and Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research Ecology Technician Alex Fergus describe some of the scientific collections and observations from the expedition.
Overview of the expedition
The Strannik 2023 Auckland Island Expedition was a privately funded botanical research trip undertaken over four weeks during January and February 2023. The expedition was co-lead by Rodney Russ and Alex Fergus, with Alex leading the seven-strong research team.
Prior to departing, Rodney and Alex spent four years planning and attempting to secure a research authority and entry permits, as well as coordinating equipment and personnel.
Another secondary research authority was coordinated by myself to collect specimens for multiple Te Papa taxonomic research projects.
The Entry permit allowed access to nine research areas, and noted recommended landing areas. The research areas covered a portion approximately 15% of the main Auckland Island, extending from shoreline to mountain top.
Access to outlying islands, including Adams and Enderby, was not permitted. Our research collections were confined to the approved research areas but our journeys often connected the research areas.
Rodney’s ship, the MV Strannik, departed Bluff on 9 January 2023. The research team worked at various locations across the length of main Auckland Island from 10 January until 2 February.
We undertook often physically strenuous botanical forays into all nine research areas approved by the Department of Conservation (DOC). Forays varied from a few hours to three days. Below we highlight the aims and preliminary results of the expedition.
The main research aims
The main aim of the expedition was to collect data on the distribution and abundance of all approximately 200 native vascular plant species and subspecies, and photograph them all.
Our focus was alpine habitats which had been seldom visited in the previous fifty years. We documented distribution and abundance in different ways.
Much of the trip comprised traditional botanical exploration: releasing a group of botanists at a site, and letting them botanize! We targeted sites that had not been the focus of previous botanical expeditions, or that looked different or interesting in terms of topography, geology or elevation.
The excellent satellite imagery layer available from Toitū Te Whenua – Land Information New Zealand was hugely helpful for pre-selecting sites. We also focused on sites known to contain certain target species based on historical publications and herbarium records.
We made multiple lists each day of all the vascular plants we saw. Brian Rance was the chief instigator of list making, which he did in his pocket notebook, and diligently transferred these data into spreadsheets on his laptop when back on the ship at the end of each day or multi-day trip.
We plan to make these lists available to the public through the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network’s (NZPCN) excellent plant lists resource.
Capturing high-quality images of all Auckland Island species was also a focus, and Chris Morse was our chief photographer, with support from the remainder of the team (see below).
We have begun making these images available through outputs such as the NZPCN factsheets (e.g. Geum albiflorum and Plantago aucklandica), as well as iNaturalist and Wikimedia Commons.
Our intention had been to remeasure several existing vegetation plots on the island, but our permit did not allow this. To enable future vegetation analysis across the island, as a starting point we measured twenty new 20 x 20 m vegetation Recce plots in different habitats across the island (Hurst et al. 2022).
You can see us setting up and measuring some of the Recce plots in the image gallery below:
A Recce plot is a standard monitoring technique. We used a 20 x 20 m plot size which is standard for forest ecosystems, and opted for consistency in plot size across vegetation types.
A Recce plot captures the abundance of all vascular plant species in a bounded area with the standard New Zealand method using the following height classes: 0-0.3m, 0.3-2m, 2-5m, 5-12m, 12-25m and 25+m.
We plan to publish an updated flora for Auckland Island, which will include several new plant records that were discovered during the expedition.
As mentioned in a previous blog, these data will also contribute toward completing a manuscript focused on the New Zealand Subantarctic Flora, which was compiled by the late David Given (1943–2005).
What about the weeds?
We were also very interested in documenting the distribution, abundance and ecology of all non-native plant species on Auckland Island.
From a purely botanical perspective, it was an absolute delight to be on Auckland Island because most habitats have few non-native species, especially high elevation habitats.
This is in stark contrast to mainland New Zealand, which has more naturalised introduced plant species than natives. Even on Motu Ihupiko Campbell Island, two degrees further south, there is a far greater abundance of non-native plant species.
The non-native species present on Auckland Island are mostly relatively benign pasture species of low conservation concern. Some of these plant introductions date back to the settlement and farming era.
However, vigilance is required to ensure no new weeds are taken to the islands, and several new non-native species were documented around sites recently used by other research teams. Detailed notes concerning the distribution of these new arrivals were made and voucher specimens were lodged in the Allan Herbarium at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research.
Many of the non-native species that have been recorded from Motu Maha Auckland Islands have not been observed for several decades. For example, strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) or gorse (Ulex europeaus), have, with luck, succumbed to the subantarctic climate or competition with native species.
Another group of particularly interesting ‘weedy’ plants are those indigenous to New Zealand but that don’t occur locally on Motu Maha Auckland Islands. These non-local native species have made their way to Auckland Island with people, as purposeful introductions or as hitchhikers.
The most conspicuous of these is tupare (Macrolearia lyallii), a tree daisy related to leatherwood that is believed to have been introduced by sealers and is locally common in coastal areas in the north-east of main Auckland Island, primarily in Port Ross.
Tupare is still spreading, and we made observations on its current distribution, including its southern limit near Kekeno Bay.
To make sure additional weeds don’t get onto the island, there are very strict biosecurity rules that must be followed for anyone who visits, starting weeks to months before the ship even sails!
Before departing, all clothing, food and equipment was thoroughly checked at the DOC Invercargill Biosecurity Facility, and we thank the team led by Sharon Trainor for all their hard work.
Also, while on the island, footwear and all muddy equipment and clothes were checked and washed when returning to the ship and between landing sites.
Taxonomic research projects: fungi, plants, and harvesters!
Team member Toni Atkinson spent her time on the expedition collecting and studying the fungal species on Auckland Island. Toni made dozens of collections and observations, which will be further studied and identified using genetics.
Our trip will have substantially increased the numbers of fungi species recorded and our knowledge of the fungal flora of the island. A future blog will provide more details about her research and some of the interesting fungi she found.
On the Te Papa collecting permit, we collected a total of 85 voucher specimens comprising:
- 32 flowering plants
- 20 ferns
- 29 liverworts
- 4 harvestmen
All of these collections have been databased, imaged, and filed, and are now housed at Te Papa’s herbarium (plants) and the Tory St collection store (harvesters). Over 600 specimen and field images can be seen here on Te Papa’s Collections Online.
This map shows where and when we made the Te Papa collections. We covered a fair part of the island!
These collections are for my own research as well as for other current taxonomic research projects undertaken by other Te Papa scientists and collaborators, and include orchids, Plantago, Myosotis, Azorella, liverworts, Juncus, ferns and harvesters.
For the vascular plants, we collected herbarium specimens and leaves in silica gel for DNA studies, some of which you can see below.
The orchids, Juncus and ferns will be studied by my Te Papa colleagues Carlos Lehnebach, Leon Perrie, and Lara Shepherd as part of their taxonomic and genetic research projects.
I collected my own research specimens of Myosotis capitata, for a taxonomic revision of New Zealand forget-me-nots, and specimens of Azorella for phylogenomic analysis by my former PhD student and collaborator, Weixuan Ning.
Pressing plants when based on a ship required a lot of team work and some creativity.
The next photo gallery highlights the whole process, from collecting in the field into field presses (aka vintage child annuals, with beautiful thick blotting pages, and highly dated content), to processing on the outside deck of the ship, to finally drying in the presses inside the ship, including in the engine room.
I was also thrilled to be allowed to collect viable seed of the two native Plantago species, P. triantha and P. aucklandica, and have them grown on by staff at Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush.
Some of the seeds have already sprouted and will become important ex situ populations of these subantarctic species for both education and research.
The liverworts were tricky. They are extremely tiny, often found on a variety of substrates such as rock, or branches of rātā or Dracophyllum, there may be multiple species growing intertwined with one another, and they really require an expert eye, a microscope and quite a bit of luck to find and identify.
We were trying to collect one species of liverwort in particular (Cheilolejeunea mimosa) for research by Peter Beveridge from Te Papa (with colleagues David Glenny and Stella Fish at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research), but unfortunately we did not have a liverwort expert on the expedition research team.
So, our strategy was to take small samples of a few square centimeters each from bark or rock at twenty different localities representing different habitats throughout Auckland Island, and put the material into packets to be dried in Toni’s dehydrator on the ship.
These twenty packets of material were sent to Stella Fish, who was able to identify all of the liverworts in each of them. Incredibly, each packet contained between one and ten different species of liverworts!
A total of 85 individual liverworts representing 25 genera and 38 species were collected. Of these, only one was a Cheilolejeunea, which was found in the last (20th) liverwort collection made on our last day on the island. Phew!
Finally, I spent a LOT of time cheerfully and diligently turning over hundreds if not thousands of logs and rocks every day that we were on the island to try to find specimens of harvesters for Te Papa Curator Invertebrates Phil Sirvid.
I once wrote a blog about What happens when you ask ornithologists to do botany. Well, this time it was, What happens when you ask a botanist to do arachnology!
I ended up finding lots of interesting critters under those rocks and logs, which I’ll write about in a future blog, but only a total of four harvesters.
Nevertheless, I’m really proud that I could find them, recognise that they were harvesters (not spiders), and collect them, as of the seven species known to be on Auckland Island, all are considered to be “Data Deficient”.
Also, collecting harvesters is very different from collecting plants, so it was a great learning experience. Phil Sirvid identified the four harvesters as three different species in three different genera.
Summary
We accomplished the main aims of our research objectives, collecting distribution and abundance data, as well as imagery, for the native and non-native vascular plant species of Auckland Island, while also collecting research specimens of fungi, plants and harvesters.
Our specimens have been databased and processed, and our iNaturalist observations are available online. Several new vascular plant records were made, the details of which will be captured in a manuscript currently under preparation for peer-reviewed scientific article and eventually, David’s manuscript on the subantarctic flora.
The Strannik 2023 expedition was fortunate to have favourable sea conditions, good weather, and an excellent level of team camaraderie; each of these aspects was key to the success of the trip.
This journey highlights the significant contribution that privately funded expeditions can still make to science, especially in remote locations.
Here you can see a photo collage of us making every effort to document the floral diversity of Auckland Island with our cameras!
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Brian Rance for contributing to this blog post, and to the entire crew and research team on the Strannik 2023 Auckland Island Expedition for embracing the research goals of the expedition and pitching in so enthusiastically to accomplish them.
References
J.M. Hurst, R.B. Allen, A.J. Fergus. 2022. The Recce method for describing New Zealand vegetation – field manual. Manaaki Whenua Press, Lincoln, New Zealand.
