In Situ Observations of Gametophytes of Six Fern Species of Costa Rica

AROS-MUALIN, D.; FLORES-GALVÁN, C.; PÁEZ, S.; PELOSSI, J.A.; SOROJSRISOM, E.; YAWN, N.; WATKINS, J.E.

AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL

AMER FERN SOC INC

Año: 2022

0002-8444

Fern gametophytes are an often overlooked part of field studies on ferns. Part of the reason for this is the challenge in finding material and the very real difficulty in identifying wild-collected plants. Most existing gametophyte descriptions are derived from lab-reared plants and while previous work has shown that many of the morphological features are similar under both conditions, we still have a poor understanding of in situ morphology for most taxa. The goal of this work was to combine a set of morhologicla observations from the gametophytes of six different species collected in situ across a range of habitats. We discovered identifiable gametophyte populations of Elaphoglossum latifolia, Polytaenium cajenense, Polypodium dulce, Sticherus bifidus, Hymenophyllum myriocarpon and Lomariopsis maxonii during the 2021 OTS Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes course in Costa Rica. Gametophytes were collected in the field, observed and photographed using stereo and compound microscopy. For many species, this work represents the first description of any kind of the species’ gametophytes. To our knowledge, this work is the first description of field collected material for all species.