2025 HARPER PRIZE SHORTLIST: For the next two weeks, we are featuring the articles shortlisted for the 2025 Harper Prize. The Harper Prize is an annual award for the best early career research paper published in Journal of Ecology. Linus Söderquist’s ‘Population viability of the orchid Gymnadenia conopsea increases with population size but is not related to genetic diversity’ is one of those shortlisted for the award.
About the paper:
What is your shortlisted paper about, and what are you seeking to answer with your research?
In this paper, we followed 18 populations of the terrestrial orchid Gymnadenia conopsea over six years, combining detailed field data on survival, growth and reproduction with genome-wide estimates of genetic diversity. We asked the question: when a plant population becomes small, is its fate driven mainly by demographic processes or by genetic erosion? We estimated long-term population growth rates and extinction risk and tested whether these were better explained by population size or genetic diversity. By linking demography and genetics directly, we aimed to clarify what drives population viability and conservation priorities.
Were you surprised by anything when working on it? Did you have any challenges to overcome?
I was surprised by how entire large populations could all but vanish during the study period. In fact, more than half of the populations studied were declining, and, within the next 30 years, one third are predicted to go extinct. Even two of the largest populations, with more than 6,000 flowering individuals, had a high probability of a 90% size reduction in 30 years.
What is the next step in this field going to be?
As orchids rely on mycorrhiza during much of their lifecycle it would be highly interesting to also include the fungal factor in the demographic models. Also, longer time series would be interesting to see if the variation in growth rates are trends or normal fluctuations.
What are the broader impacts or implications of your research for policy or practice?
It is clear that we need incorporate stochastic events into our conservation plans, to take account of extreme weather events in a changing climate.
About the author:
How did you get involved in ecology?
I have always been interested in nature. As I grew, I spent my summers running around in species rich semi-natural grassland pastures on the Swedish island of Gotland, stepping in cow dung and seeing the flies and plants that thrive because of the cows. This guided me onward to see that human activity can also be good for nature and not only bad. This means we can halt or turn the current biodiversity crisis if we plan our actions correctly. Essentially all the populations in the paper were in cow pastures (a few horse pastures and one camel).
What is your current position?
Currently I am a postdoc researcher at the forestry institute of Sweden. Here I am modelling how different management actions affect understory plant biodiversity in the short and long term.
What one piece of advice would you give to someone in your field?
Behind this paper lays six long field seasons. In total at least 17 persons joined me in the field over the years. More people make the work more fun and easy. But remember to also consider the human aspects besides the scientific, i.e. plan for social activities.
