Hate to Love ‘em - Kayleigh Dodson
One of my mother’s favorite plants is the beautiful flowering plant Lantana camara. It bloomed nearly year-round in my backyard growing up, loving the Texas heat and not caring about the lack of rain. Years later, once I reached ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú´«Ã½ÎÄ»¯×÷Æ·, I inquired about independent research. A post-doctoral researcher in a plant phylogenetics and comparative biology allowed me to shadow and work under her for a few months studying the structurally colored fruits of the beautiful flowering plant Lantana strigocamara (syn. L. camara). It was then I found out that the beloved plant was actually one of the most invasive species in the world – and its takeover was due to the ornamental plant jumping from people’s cultivated gardens into natural ecosystems. Thus began my love-hate relationship with invasive species.
I was fascinated by the invasive nature of L. strigocamara and decided to start a project of my own as an honors thesis. Specifically, I wanted to investigate the differences between this incredibly invasive species and its close relative Lantana depressa, which is endemic to and only found in Miami, Florida. I didn’t understand why L. strigocamara was so invasive and spreading across the globe, while L. depressa was restricted to the pine rocklands of Miami. In fact, these two species had been hybridizing for years, driving L. depressa towards extinction! For my honors thesis, I worked to understand the physiological differences between these two species, in their hybrids, in hopes of explaining why one species is invasive and the other endangered. During field work in summer 2022, every time I spotted a L. strigocamara plant or what was clearly a hybrid between L. strigocamara and L. depressa, I would cheer – it was exciting to find evidence of the hybridization issue my whole project is about. Shortly after, I would remember that finding this invasive species in its non-native habitat or finding evidence that a native plant is being driven out of existence, is actually a very bad sign for the endangered L. depressa. I am grateful for the learning opportunities this project has presented me, and I am grateful that L. strigocamara introduced me to the wonderfully-terrible world of invasive species.
