The secret is out. For months, scientists have been trying to contain their joy because they suspected they had discovered a new plant species high up on the ridges of Kauaʻi's mountaintops.
A drone system named Mamba is partially to thank for the discovery. Mamba has a robotic arm equipped with a pair of shears to collect material from rare plants found in inaccessible places — like Kauaʻi cliffsides. It also sports a mechanical pouch that stores seeds and cuttings and opens on command once the drone lands.
Ben Nyberg is a geographic information systems and drone program coordinator with the Hawaiʻi-based National Tropical Botanical Garden. He and his colleagues just published an article about how their drones have been able to identify a native flora never before known to science.
"There's so much cliff area and it really feels a little overwhelming sometimes when I start out in an area and I look up at thousand-foot cliffs surrounding me. But with some time and training, I've learned to identify these kind of indicator species that occur on the cliff, so I can pick out the spots and kind of whittle down the areas that are really the most important," he said.
Nyberg and his team first spotted the new species during a drone survey in Waiahulu Valley at Waimea Canyon in December 2021. They then used Mamba in March 2022 to collect a sample.
"Since then we've been doing a lot of studies on it and looking more closely at the populations around the canyon and then working on the species description," he said.
He said they knew pretty quickly that it was a new species but wanted to "double-check, triple-check."
"We had some seeds that we shared with people that are experts at growing this genus, Schiedea. So they grew them in a nursery, and then we studied the plants, made measurements of each of the floral parts and the leaves, and noted all those fine details, because we couldn't get to the plants on the ground," Nyberg said.
The new species is called Schiedea waiahuluensis — a reference to the valley where it was discovered. The genus, Schiedea, is endemic to Hawaiʻi and now includes 36 species.
"The whole thing is pretty small, as big as your hand. It kind of drapes off of a cliff, so it has roots that are just right in the cracks in the rocks, and the plant kind of hangs down. But the the place where the actual leaves grow is only about as big as your hand, and the hairs are pretty minute, maybe a half a centimeter or something that grow all over the surface of the front and the back of the leaf and the buds. So it's kind of a unique look for this genus," he said.
Nyberg said that flying the drone can be complicated, and it takes time to learn how to fly it properly.
"It's actually two different drones, one is carrying, and one is the Mamba that actually does the collecting, swings in like a pendulum onto the cliff surface. You have to practice flying both pieces of the drone, and then once you get good, you can fly both the drones at the same time," he said.
Nyberg said that Mamba has expanded their ability to learn about different plant and animal species in hard-to-access cliff environments.
"The conservation impact has just been great with this new machine," Nyberg said.
While collecting Schiedea waiahuluensis, Nyberg and his team may have found a new bug species as well.
"In our first picture of the specimen we got, there was a bug on it. Since March '22, we've made a few more collections of the plant and we've noticed that same insect on each of the collections that we've made. So we collected one of the insects and sent it over to Dan Polhemus at Bishop Museum. And so it looks like that may be a new species as well. So with one collection of the Mamba, we may have documented two new species," he said.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Oct. 15, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1. Tori DeJournett adapted this story for the web.
