In the misty cloud forests of the Andes, there is one particular genus that wildlife traders can’t get enough of.
It is not a primate or a reptile; no, the goal is something more subtle and a little more disturbing: Dracula orchids. They look and sound like they should have blood-related names.
But in reality the genre takes its name from Latin and means «little dragon»thanks to its long, dark, fang-shaped sepals.
When In 1871 the first specimen of this species was extracted In the western Andes of Colombia, 19th-century botanists described the flowers as «grotesque and extravagant,» provoking what one of them called an «irresistible attraction,» reports Science Alert.
Orchid collectors began shipping them to European greenhouses almost immediately.
That attraction never completely faded.
These orchids have gone viral on the internet not only because of their disturbing name and gothic appearance, but because their sepals seem to resemble the «face of a monkey».
Many hobbyists and professional growers trade responsibly grown plants, but others still seek out wild orchids, and Dracula species are no exception. For a plant that can exist in populations of only a few dozen individuals, a single collecting expedition can be disastrous.
«What draws attention about Dracula orchids is the contrast between their enormous popularity on the Internet and the almost total lack of knowledge we have about their state of conservation,» Diogo Veríssimo, from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, wrote last year.
It was part of an assessment that revealed that almost 70 percent of the 133 species in the genus were threatened with extinction, dice Science Alert.
«We often take for granted that the species we see widely shared on social media must be well-studied, but in the case of these orchids, that is far from true. Their viral fame has not translated into knowledge or protection, and that is what makes the reassessment so urgent,» Veríssimo said.
Almost all known species of Dracula orchids are epiphytes that attach to trees in the cloud forests of the Andes, mainly in Colombia and Ecuador.
An enormous 69% of the specimens of this genus are known in less than six places around the planet. Some exist in a single valley.
A new study published in the journal Biological Conservation has traced exactly what has happened to that «irresistible attraction» over four decades of formal business records.
The study revealed that 121 of the 133 species of the genus (91 percent) have been legally traded internationally since 1981. These are more than 112,000 individual plants, distributed across 25 exporting countries and 52 importing countries.
Almost half of that trade, 49 percent, came from countries where the species does not even grow, it indicates. Science Alert.
The largest single shipment in the 42 years of recording was 4,650 Dracula cordobae plants, a species found nowhere else on Earth except in Ecuadorsent from Taiwan to Belgium in 2004.
Each of those more than 112,000 plants was officially registered as artificially propagated. In more than four decades of records, none were ever declared as taken from the wild.
The researchers They are not sure that it can be fully trusted.
«In the case of recently described or discovered species, key life history traits, such as longevity, are often unknown or lack empirical scientific evidence,» the team, led by orchidologist Edicson Parra-Sánchez of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, wrote in their paper, it says. Science Alert.
«This uncertainty complicates the determination of propagation status and may increase the risk that wild-sourced individuals will be misclassified as artificially propagated.»
In fact, 89% of all Dracula species were originally described for science using plants already found in nurseries, and not documented wild populations, reports Science Alert.
Flower traffic
Many of those founding plants were found outside the orchid’s country of origin, mainly in the United States. Only 7 percent of species were formally described from confirmed wild plants.
In other words, by the time science had named many of these orchids, they were already on sale. Which is a bit suspicious.
Across the genus, the average time between the formal scientific description of a species and its first appearance in commerce was 8 years, a figure that was reduced to 5 years for species described after 1981.
Eighteen percent of the species entered the market within two years of being described.
One of them, Dracula fuligifera, It was already being exported a year before it was formally described.
Dracula anthracina is known only from a small fragment of forest, where only 17 adult plants have been recorded. It has been marketed internationally since the year of its discovery, indicates Science Alert.
About 10 percent of all recorded Dracula trade (more than 11,000 plants) was recorded solely as «Dracula sp.», without any species name, making it difficult to know exactly what was bought and sold.
Researchers also found individual errors hidden in official records: one species mislabeled in a 2013 shipment, another traded for years under a name that was later corrected by taxonomists, and two natural hybrids exported and recorded as if they were full species.
Currently, Dracula is listed on Appendix II of CITES, allowing its regulated trade with the appropriate permits.
The study’s authors argue that this is not enough and call for the genus to be included in Appendix I, which prohibits international trade for commercial purposes.
«Our results indicate that listing the genus on CITES Appendix I may be necessary to prevent further erosion of evolutionary history,» the researchers write.
That higher level of protection will force a little more time to pass between the discovery of a species and its entry into the market, he says. Science Alert.
Not all Dracula species have made it this far.
three species they are so rare that barely exist outside of research articles. Wild populations of Dracula irmelinae are known, but its cultivation has never been recorded.
The fledgling Dracula species It has only been cultivated in the place where it was first discovered.
No one has seen Dracula fafnir again, in the wild or anywhere else, since the day he was formally described.
GML
