Sven harnesses vital plant life knowledge
AN Edge Hill University lecturer is helping to create a vital worldwide research group of 27 experts studying a special group of plants which grow high up in the canopy of tropical forests.
Senior lecturer in plant science Sven Batke, is one of the world’s leading researchers studying epiphytes (air plants) which don’t take root in soil and include ferns and orchids.
Despite being vital to the global ecosystem and its flow of water and carbon, data about the plants has never been shared among individual researchers or stored centrally.
EPiG, the Epiphyte Inventory Group, will bring together worldwide data, allowing researchers to see the ‘big picture’, identifying patterns and areas of potential research.
Sven, who climbs up to 100m up canopy trees to study epiphytes, said: “Epiphytes are vitally important to our ecosystem as they account for over 9% of the world’s total vascular flora and up to 50% of the leaf biomass in tropical forests.
“There are small numbers of academics studying epiphytes around the world, with most research being confined to tropical forests, but everyone carries out data sampling in their own way using different methods.
“EPiG will allow all this data to be made available to the whole research community for the advancement of knowledge.’’
For more information please visit https://youtu. be/3CU1fZVxm50 and follow @EpigGroup