Republic, Mo. - Katie A. Kull, a recent intern with the Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network, will publish original research in a national scientific journal, the American Midland Naturalist. Her peer-reviewed article about royal catchfly will appear in the journal’s July 2020 edition. Kull also presented her research at the 2020 Missouri Natural Resources Conference.
Headquartered at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, the Heartland Network monitors the health of natural resources across fifteen National Park sites in eight states. Kull served as an American Conservation Experience (ACE) intern with the network from November 2018 to April 2020.
Kull’s independent project focused on royal catchfly (Silene regia). “These are beautiful perennial plants with bright red late-summer flowers that grow in prairies and open savannas, including at Wilson’s Creek," Kull said. Researchers last surveyed the flower at Wilson’s Creek in 2000. Kull’s team did a new survey in 2019 and found evidence of major changes. “Unfortunately, we saw a huge decline in the number of these plants, likely corresponding with increasing overgrowth from less frequent prescribed fires on the park and other habitat changes," Kull said. Of the fifteen populations of royal catchfly found in Wilson’s Creek earlier, only five had detectable growth in 2019. Kull and her team found only 60 to 70 royal catchfly plants in the park, she said.
Royal catchfly gets its name from sticky hairs on the plant’s calyx (a tubular green structure below the bloom). The hairs “catch" small insects, which Kull said may be an evolutionary step toward becoming carnivorous. Hummingbirds are the main pollinators. The plant is considered uncommon in Missouri, and is designated as rare, threatened, or endangered in several other states. Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield is conducting a long-term landscape restoration project to return more areas to conditions that existed at the time of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in August 1861. Restored landscapes not only will give visitors better views of the battlefield but can benefit native plants like the royal catchfly.
“Katie did an excellent job with her project to revisit and map populations of a rare plant [royal catchfly] at the battlefield. The fact that she published her findings and presented her results at a professional conference is exceptional," said Mike DeBacker, Heartland Network program manager.
National Park Service sites served by the Heartland Network parks range in size from 160 acres to nearly 100,000 acres, and include sites commemorating Civil War battles, Native American heritage, westward expansion, and U.S. presidents. Ecosystems of these parks include rivers, lakes, springs, prairies, wetlands, and forests. The Heartland Network inventories and monitors species and natural features to help these parks understand and manage the natural resources in their care.
To learn more about the National Park Service’s nationwide Inventory and Monitoring Network, including Heartland Network, visit:
https://www.nps.gov/im/networks.htm
https://www.nps.gov/im/htln/index.htm
https://www.nps.gov/wicr/learn/nature/index.htm
To learn more about fellowships with the American Conservation (ACE) Experience Emerging Professional Internship Corps (EPIC), visit:
http://www.usaconservation.org/programs/epic-internship/
Tags: heartland inventory and monitoring network inventory and monitoring nps inventory and monitoring division inventory and monitoring division royal catchfly wildflower endangered plants resources conservation science plant communities plant distributions biological diversity viewshed rare & endangered species rare plants uncommon plants wildflowers battlefields
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
