A root's routes

My independent project at La Selva focused around apogeotropic roots. I was working in cahoots with 3 really fun people- Beth, Alex and Katie. I can't remember if I posted about these roots already, so I'll post again. Apogeotropic roots are roots that grow underground for some distance, as most roots do, then grow up a tree. This is likely to get nutrients from water flowing down the stem of the tree. We spent about 3 days digging up apogeotropic roots we found on Welfia palms to learn the identity of the parent tree. Very little is known about these roots- they've been described in the Amazon and Australia in a couple studies, but that's about it. We found that these roots trace back to at least 5 species of trees and many lianas. We also looked for mycorrhizal associations above and belowground in the apo-roots.... and found them. It appears that the mycorrhizae live in both types of roots.

We gave our presentation on this today and now we have to write up the paper. This picture shows a big hole we dug to try to follow an apo-root. Unfortunately, we abandoned this hole at around the time the picture was taken because the root just dove underneath the big tree in the picture.