Transcript from podcast ‘Strange Bedfellows’, episode 217 ‘Clinker Shrubs and their Lodgers’. Hosts Ariadne Royce (AR) and Lex Charlton (LC).


AR: Hello, hello, good morning, or good evening depending on when you listen, I suppose, welcome to another episode of Strange Bedfellows – a dive into the bizarre world of symbiotic organisms, with me - Ariadne Royce - and my dear friend, flatmate and co-host, Lex Charlton.

LC: Hi.

AR: To the point as ever. Lex this week was your turn to pick our symbionts of the week so what do you have for us?

LC: This week our strange bedfellows are a plant-animal combo-

AR: We don’t get many of them.

LC: No, no we don’t. This is a good one though, will hopefully make up for our lack so far. First up - what do you know about bromeliads?

[silence]

LC: A good start.

AR: Sorry, I… bromeliads. They’re plants? They are, right? Like, pineapples and other spiky, leafy things.

LC: They are plants, and yeah – pineapples are an example of a bromeliad. They’re a pretty varied group, some grow on the ground like pineapples, others are epiphytes and grow on other plants. They’re native to the Americas, ranging from the Southern USA down through Central America and across most of South America, and can be found in rain forests, deserts, mountains-

AR: They’re a pretty diverse group, then.

LC: Yeah, though that wasn’t always the case, right? So, the group first evolved in a part of South America called the Guiana Shield, specifically on these really high plateaus called tepuis. They first appear 100 million years ago but then…don’t really do much.

AR: What do you mean, like they just sort of hang out on the plateau and are pretty localised species?

LC: Pretty much. Some plants like grasses evolve and quickly sweep across the world, whereas bromeliads chilled on the Guiana Shield until about 15 million years ago when it began to spread… with one exception.

AR: Oh my, do tell.

LC: Like I said before, bromeliads exists across the Americas, and pretty much nowhere else. There is one species in Africa, but for today, our first bedfellow are the clinker shrubs of the Papagaios Islands.

AR: Love the Papagaios Islands. They’re the ones with all the weird birds, yeah?

LC: The very same.

AR: They are very isolated islands. How did our bromeliads reach them, and when?

LC: The best guess is that seeds were carried by migrating birds, but no one is 100% on that. As for when, approximately 30 million years ago.

AR: And what is a clinker shrub? I’ve never heard of them.