The latest research has shown some surprising news. Photo credit Jon C. has played a critical role in helping to track the invasion and Carpobrotus (ice plants or sour fig) flowering patterns. These chunky evergreen succulents hail from South Africa. Today, they are distributed across coastal ecosystems from the San Francisco Bay to the Mediterranean, forever altering local environments and forming new obstacles for native plant life.
An international team of researchers analyzed over 1,700 photographs of Carpobrotus sourced from various social media platforms and citizen science initiatives. Their results provide evidence that invasive plants exhibit phenological matching with regions they invade. Such adaptation provides invaluable lessons for crafting smart, effective management strategies.
The Invasive Nature of Carpobrotus
Yet Carpobrotus is not simply a pretty plant. Its aesthetic charms pale against its considerable ecological threats as it smothers our local ecosystems. Widespread along coastlines in all but one of the world’s continents, these resilient plants often form monocultures, outcompeting native habitats and species and monopolizing resources. It’s this extreme ability to adapt to different environments that make Carpobrotus so successful as an invader.
In its native home of South Africa, Carpobrotus displays a brief, intense flowering highpoint. In the areas it has invaded, it flowers for months on end. This adaptation complicates control measures. For instance, in California and Europe, Carpobrotus typically flowers in May and June, while in New Zealand, it blooms in October. Learning more about these timelines will allow researchers and conservationists to develop better tactics to stop the plant from spreading.
“These plants are notoriously difficult to control because they spread both by seed and by fragments. Even a small piece can regrow into a new colony. Knowing exactly when they flower in each region means we can strike when they’re most vulnerable, before they produce the thousands of seeds that ensure next subsequent invasions.” – Dr. Ana Novoa
Harnessing Citizen Science through Social Media
The study’s lead author, Dr. Susan Canavan, an honorary researcher with the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Galway, emphasized the unique opportunity presented by social media data. Thousands of citizen scientists inadvertently captured the spread of these invasive plants while documenting their encounters with these beautiful places.
We realized thousands of people were unknowingly documenting these invasions in the background of their beach selfies and cliff-top sunset photos, Dr. Canavan noted. “This gave us observers across the globe, from California’s Big Sur to New Zealand’s coastlines to Portugal’s tourist beaches.”
This review reinforces the idea that these highly-trafficked, sought-after tourism hot spots are excellent groundwater-monitoring wells. Each scenic overlook displaying Carpobrotus has hundreds of Instagram posts. These posts provide an inspiring model for how to track the invasive plant’s spread. Dr. Canavan pointed out a critical drawback: remote invaded areas often remain invisible without active documentation from citizen scientists.
“Tourist destinations were goldmines of data. Every scenic overlook with Carpobrotus had hundreds of Instagram posts,” Dr. Canavan added. “But this also showed us the bias in social media data.”
Implications for Ecosystem Management
These results have important implications for the control of Carpobrotus invasions. As these plants adapt their flowering patterns to local conditions, knowing when they bloom allows for timely interventions before they can produce seeds and further proliferate.
Delivery of these management strategies would need to involve researchers, local communities, and conservationists working closely together. Involving citizen scientists can leverage the work it takes to monitor bad guys like Carpobrotus in and reduce their spread. Projects that raise public awareness and interest in cataloging their local flora increase valuable specimen collection tenfold. Such informed participation will result in sounder management decisions.
Preventing invasive species from invading ecosystems is one of the top global threats to biodiversity. Creative new approaches, like using social media data, offer new paths to address and prevent these pressing ecological threats.