A general flowering event in early 2024? Calling in collaborators
Zoe Lieb
Dear Mastwatch colleagues,
First off, thank you to those who took the time to reach out a few months ago when I sent around a survey in my search to compile a dataset of Southeast Asian general flowering and masting observations as a part of my PhD project. I am continuing this project by organizing some informal Zoom discussion groups with experts while my collaborators and I devise an appropriate data collection strategy to take full advantage of a possible 2024 masting event. More details are included below, but here is a shortcut to register for a discussion time: Fill out this form to attend.
Thank you!
Zoë Lieb
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As a PhD candidate and a member of the Ecological Cascades Lab at the University of Queensland, I am studying general flowering and mast fruiting patterns in Southeast Asia along with my advisor, Dr. Matthew Luskin.
(As you all likely know already!) We may see a Southeast Asian tropical general flowering and mast fruiting (GFMF) in 2024. The El Niño-associated weather anomaly (e.g., drought and reduced rainfall) may have triggered this amazing and extremely ecologically important phenomenon, which hasn’t happened in the region since 2019.
GFMF are highly visible events that occur in Southeast Asian rainforests when several species of canopy trees (e.g. Dipterocarps) produce flowers and subsequent fruits in a synchronous reproductive period. This supra-annual event typically occurs every 2-5 years coinciding with El Niño. These events result in a massive but brief increase in food resources for the entire ecosystem.
GFMF events are critically important to rainforest ecology including wildlife dynamics. However, we currently have insufficient data about the spatial and temporal dynamics of these ecosystem-driving events to model their effects.
We would like to urgently call everyone’s attention to the possible upcoming GFMF and encourage our colleagues who can mobilize research, and at a minimum take note of significant flowering and/or fruiting.
What can you do?
1. Join us on February 1 or February 5 for a short discussion about ideal phenology data collection methods and our work studying this important phenomenon in 2024. Fill out this form to attend.
2. Share your observations of prior GFMF to join co-authorship on a review paper, just fill out this online survey.
3. To stay in the loop about this GFMF, join the Mastwatch listserv for updates and to share your observations in a specialized research group.
4. To share observations privately or express interest in collaboration, including camera trapping before-during-and-after the GFMF, contact me, Zoë Lieb (z.l...@uq.edu.au) PhD candidate at the University of Queensland in the Ecological Cascades Lab .
a. Please record notes about when and where you notice significant flowers or fruits in Southeast Asia rainforests this year and share them with Zoë.
Sincerely,
Zoë Lieb & Matthew Luskin