![]() ![]() ![]() Sandy-Lynn Steenhuisen, left, and Ruth Cozien look for pollen on a lizard. They were fairly convinced that the plants were being pollinated by nocturnal rodents, and initially set the cameras to only record at night. The plants’ flowers were so low to the ground that simply setting the camera traps was a challenge which involved either digging into the stony ground (“and trying not to accidentally kick a rock on to a hiker below”) or using the very steep terrain to aim the shot “up the plant’s skirt”, says Cozien. “I’ve never been involved in such a physically demanding project,” says Steenhuisen, who frequently found herself lagging behind trail-runners Cozien and Van der Niet. They often left the site in complete darkness, as thick mist swirled around them. Leaving their base at around 6am, the group spent more than 12 hours on the mountain every day, lugging everything from motion-trigger cameras to rodent traps and peanut butter bait balls up and down the steep slopes the Guthriea call home in their quest to work out who was pollinating the flowers. It didn’t take much to persuade Dr Sandy-Lynn Steenhuisen at the University of the Free State’s department of plant sciences and Prof Steven Johnson of the Centre for Functional Biodiversity at KwaZulu-Natal to join the couple on a two-week “working holiday” in the mountains. Male and female Guthriea capensis flowers.
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