A New Woolly Devil with Isaac Lichter Marck
Sunflowers come in all shapes and sizes, and the group has gained a new member. Nicknamed the “woolly devil,” Ovicula biradiata is the product of the amazing bi-national collaboration between taxonomists, conservationists, and community scientists in Big Bend National Park. But it comes at a time when the future of National Parks is uncertain.
“I think this particular discovery has inspired a lot of people outside of the world of biodiversity science to recognize that we still have a lot of work to do in terms of just describing the biodiversity in environments as iconic as the US National Parks” says Isaac Lichter Marck, one of the taxonomists involved in the description. “We assume that because it's found within a US national park that it'll be within an environment that's preserved into the future. That's been the ideal of national parks. But I think in the current reality we have to be cautious about that assumption.”
Listen in to learn more about Isaac and his work, the tremendous effort that went into this discovery, and what the future might look like for this little plant and others.
Isaac Lichter Marck’s paper “Ovicula biradiata, a new genus of Compositae from Big Bend National Park in Trans-Pecos Texas” is in issue 252 of Phytokeys
It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.252.137624
A transcript of this episode can be found here: Isaac Lichter Marck - Transcript
New Species: Ovicula biradiata
Episode image credit: Cathy Hoyt
Other articles about this new species:
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/nx-s1-5308248/wooly-devil-new-species-genus-big-bend
https://www.nps.gov/bibe/learn/news/new-plant-species-discovered-in-big-bend.htm
Articles about cuts to National Parks staff and funding:
www.bbc.com/news/articles/czx7kez4vx2o
www.npr.org/2025/02/28/nx-s1-5304434/what-doge-cuts-could-mean-for-national-park-visitors
www.npca.org/articles/6614-five-ways-president-trump-s-executive-orders-could-harm-national-parks
Follow Isaac on social media:
Bluesky: @ca-naturalist.bsky.social
Instagram: California_naturalist
Twitter: @ca-naturalist
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Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom)
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