# Does anyone know this book??



## Dido (Oct 8, 2012)

Hi just saw an offr for this book. 

Can anyone tell me something about it and if it is worth to buy??

Reproduction Strategy of Paphiopedilum Armeniacum 

https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=12774


Thanks in advance


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## NYEric (Oct 8, 2012)

check ebay.


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## Roth (Oct 9, 2012)

No need to check ebay, it is on free download somewhere, I will try to find out back the link, and it is an official free download, not a copy.


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## JeanLux (Oct 9, 2012)

I downloaded it from the above link !!!! Jean


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## SlipperKing (Oct 9, 2012)

Good deal JeanLux!


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## eggshells (Oct 10, 2012)

https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=19467

click on the pdf icon


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## Dido (Oct 10, 2012)

Thats great thanks for your help


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## Roth (Oct 13, 2012)

Reading that 'book', it is again a very strange case of university published stuff for the sake of publishing ( and maybe keeping the lab open...).

There are a lot of statistics inside, but nothing that can be proven, nearly no photos of the wild colonies, the few photos show freshly collected plants like those supplied during the Chinese New Year, no pictures of cultivation, no mineral or soil analysis data, no seed germination data or study... Just empty, empty, and somewhat more empty chapters.

One funny thing, the publisher still sells the book for 43USD as an ebook, and what we download is supposedly only the first chapter for free, not more, but in fact that's the complete book for free...


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## naoki (Oct 13, 2012)

Roth, I understand that this is probably not a book for people who is just interested in cultivation. It is great for people interested in the science side of orchid biology, though.

Compared with other plant species, reproductive biology of orchids aren't well studied. So this is a valuable contribution. To me, objective science tells more about the biology of the orchids than a bunch of photos. I do like to see photos of natural habitat, but most scientific papers usually don't rely on photos to tell the story. There are lots of literatures about evolution of mating-system and life-history strategy, and compared with these other studies, I desire a little more thorough treatment (e.g., using markers to estimate the selfing-rates, number of sires per flower, population structure etc.). Also, estimates of inbreeding depression is only limited to seed germination rates, which is understandable because it would be difficult to measure the seedling survival rates in the nature. But still, it's a good start, and I learned a lot from reading a couple chapters of this book.


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## Roth (Oct 13, 2012)

naoki said:


> Roth, I understand that this is probably not a book for people who is just interested in cultivation. It is great for people interested in the science side of orchid biology, though.
> 
> Compared with other plant species, reproductive biology of orchids aren't well studied. So this is a valuable contribution. To me, objective science tells more about the biology of the orchids than a bunch of photos. I do like to see photos of natural habitat, but most scientific papers usually don't rely on photos to tell the story. There are lots of literatures about evolution of mating-system and life-history strategy, and compared with these other studies, I desire a little more thorough treatment (e.g., using markers to estimate the selfing-rates, number of sires per flower, population structure etc.). Also, estimates of inbreeding depression is only limited to seed germination rates, which is understandable because it would be difficult to measure the seedling survival rates in the nature.



That's where the major mess starts. It is exceedingly hard to believe that the authors did not take many photos of the armeniacum in the wild over the course of their study, and as you point out there are not so many published indeed, even in specialized 'ecology' books.

The reason is bleak, the whole book, to my mind, has been written in front of a computer, and period. There is nothing behind, no study, nothing, NOTHING, just like a fiction novel.

I happen to know many collectors, and one of the reasons why the massive poaching is never publicly mentioned, for many orchids... Because the collectors SAVE the botanist and scientists, they take photos in the wild, where the botanist can enjoy nice girls (or boys, for those inclined in...), good food, good wine, and just wait some habitat photos ( and we hope that he did not order from a trader, who would go to the Ba Vi Ho Chi Minh house, and take the photos by plugging a couple of plants there for a couple minutes... like it happened twice..., but more like the Paphiopedilum tigrinum 'in situ' photos, taken by a local collector in Burma, whose a couple of the whole set have been published in a well known, and famous, Paphiopedilum book, as being by the author, and in China...).

I will tell a story ( that I told in Perth...). I helped an Asian University, as they wanted to publish research on Paphiopedilum seed sowing in vitro. They had a sponsorship from a private institution (nothing orchid related by that way...) to complete that research on the Paphiopedilum. They asked me how I do, they asked me seeds ( as they just had a few fresh wild collected plants, not blooming, at the start of their study). To publish, with regressive analysis, statistics on the best media, quantity of seedlings, timing, etc... it took them FOUR MONTHS FROM THE TIME I GAVE THEM THE SEEDS TO MAKE A COMPLETE PAPER ON GERMINATION AND DEFLASKING, justify the money from the sponsorship and ask for more money, on another project. Of course the publication is without a single photo... except a wild paph in bloom at the beginning, in a pot, and in one version (that they had to remove online...) a single flask of germinating protocorm of obviously either dendrobium, bulbophyllum or coelogyne...

That's why when you say it is useful, I say it is useless, because we do not know if it fantasy or not. The photos of armeniacum with the stolons, or the armeniacum with side shoot are typical of batches purchased from the collectors, or local nurseries, not collected by researchers of any kind, believe me... From that, one can think that the whole book is just a fantasy, but nothing scientific.

The reason why most scientific papers do not rely on photos is simply because the research has not been done, I have several other examples first hand...

If you look at some of the parts, how can they figure out that the flowers tend to self ??? Only a DNA analysis could eventually prove so, as for me I have never seen it, and could not figure out how the pollen could touch the stigma when the flower ages... Or the masses of seedlings observed during the study. I have been to Baoshan, where there is a colony of armeniacum by the roadside. I did not see many seedlings if any at all, the smaller plants were restarts from the nodes of the main stolons ( eventually some plants never bloom, that's true too...). The fruit set rate is in the few per thousands, this I know it first hand, because the collectors do not remove the seed capsules if the flower spike is fresh, and in july/august, when they collect a few dozen thousands plants, only a few have a flower spike alive and/or a seed capsule... Where and how they germinated the seeds to assess the depressive effect of inbreeding is not mentioned anywhere, this would have been interesting. If they had a poor media to germinate those, the results are useless, but we cannot know... 

As an aside, figures 4.1 and 4.2 do not look really to be taken in the wild, to be kind...


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## naoki (Oct 14, 2012)

For some parts, I agree with you. I don't know if you care about the details, but I made a couple comments which may help you understand this paper (sorry if it is too technical, I tried to explain in a simple way, but I may have failed).



Roth said:


> That's where the major mess starts. It is exceedingly hard to believe that the authors did not take many photos of the armeniacum in the wild over the course of their study, and as you point out there are not so many published indeed, even in specialized 'ecology' books.



I don't take much photos during my fieldworks, neither. But I do like photo-books of wild orchids. I wish there are more. If you can get hold of lots of photos, you should try to publish a book. I would buy one.



Roth said:


> The reason is bleak, the whole book, to my mind, has been written in front of a computer, and period. There is nothing behind, no study, nothing, NOTHING, just like a fiction novel.



I don't see any sign of scientific misconducts, if that's what you are accusing the authors for.



Roth said:


> To publish, with regressive analysis, statistics on the best media, quantity of seedlings, timing, etc... it took them FOUR MONTHS FROM THE TIME I GAVE THEM THE SEEDS TO MAKE A COMPLETE PAPER ON GERMINATION AND DEFLASKING, justify the money from the sponsorship and ask for more money, on another project.



That sounds like a tight time-line. Is it possible that they used seeds from other sources? If you know that they used your seeds, you probably should contact the editor of the journal with your proof.



Roth said:


> That's why when you say it is useful, I say it is useless, because we do not know if it fantasy or not. The photos of armeniacum with the stolons, or the armeniacum with side shoot are typical of batches purchased from the collectors, or local nurseries, not collected by researchers of any kind, believe me... From that, one can think that the whole book is just a fantasy, but nothing scientific.
> 
> The reason why most scientific papers do not rely on photos is simply because the research has not been done, I have several other examples first hand...



Hmmm, I don't quite follow your logic here. Are the authors of this book same as the researcher who you gave the seeds? Also, it is an "interesting" view of science about "importance" of photo. I wonder how you would show a proof of, e.g., Central Limit Theorem with photos.



Roth said:


> If you look at some of the parts, how can they figure out that the flowers tend to self ??? Only a DNA analysis could eventually prove so, as for me I have never seen it, and could not figure out how the pollen could touch the stigma when the flower ages...



I guess you are talking about Table 5.2. I was a little confused, too, because they don't use normal terminology in the field of mating-system evolution and English is not so great. But their data proves what you said. What you are talking about is called autonomous selfing (self-fertilization without aid of pollinators). Their bagging experiments support no autonomous selfing (mentioned in Ch. 5, Sec. 2.4). There are several modes of self-fertilization. So they compared the seed set of intact flowers agains that of flowers with pollen removed before anthesis. This is a standard technique. The difference in the seed set is likely due to facilitated selfing or competing selfing (since bagging experiments showed no autonomous selfing). In other words, when pollinators visit P. armeniacum, the movement of pollinators could cause self-fertilization in addition to deposition of outcross pollen. I agree, I'm a little bit surprised with 10-20% selfing rate. And you are right, DNA marker-based (or isozyme is ok, too) would give additional interesting info (as I mentioned). Their method could underestimate the selfing rate because geitonogamy (self-fertilization between flowers of a same individual/genet) isn't included in their estimate.



Roth said:


> Or the masses of seedlings observed during the study. I have been to Baoshan, where there is a colony of armeniacum by the roadside. I did not see many seedlings if any at all, the smaller plants were restarts from the nodes of the main stolons ( eventually some plants never bloom, that's true too...). The fruit set rate is in the few per thousands, this I know it first hand, because the collectors do not remove the seed capsules if the flower spike is fresh, and in july/august, when they collect a few dozen thousands plants, only a few have a flower spike alive and/or a seed capsule...



Interesting, could age structure and fruit sets be influenced by environment? That happens in other plant species. 



Roth said:


> Where and how they germinated the seeds to assess the depressive effect of inbreeding is not mentioned anywhere, this would have been interesting. If they had a poor media to germinate those, the results are useless, but we cannot know...



I agree that they should have given more methodological detail for this part. Also, I didn't see the detail of statistics. They say mu-detection, p.59 near the bottom, but I'm not sure what it is.

But how can a poor media explain differential germination rates between artificially selfed vs outcrossed seeds? So it is possible that there is some form of early-acting inbreeding depression (as is the case of many outcrossing species), but the connection between germination rate and fitness is not straight forward. For example, species with seed dormancy may have their optimized germination schedule, so higher seed germination in the first year may not lead to the higher overall fitness.


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