The EEBlog

A little adventure in Adamawa, Cameroon--the mosquito sampling trip 1

2011-10-10T13:19:00.003-05:00

It has been two days since I came back from the mosquito sampling trip in the Adamawa Province. It is the 2011 president election day today. I am enjoying the tranquility of this special Sunday in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon, while there came the melodious call to the prayers from a mosque nearby, which reminded me of most days in the Adamawa Province, where Muslim culture dominates.

view of Yaoundé; minaret of a mosque at a distance

"Why did you come to Cameroon for research on mosquitoes?" As I was asked this question often enough, I'd say it all started from a paper I discussed with my advisor Prof. Lacey Knowles three years ago. It simulated situations where a chromosomal structural mutation which reverses the gene orders--inversions--in mosquito populations can promote rapid adaptation to different habitats. The alternative inversions copies from parents might leave no direct fitness cost on the hybrids, but indirectly influencing offspring of them by largely suppressing recombinations around the inversion regions. And if luckily, genes that are crucial to the local adaptation reside in the region, the combination of them can be preserved longer without being shuffled with maladapted alleles from different habitats. I got really interested in the biological and modeling aspects of the evolution of inversions in promoting adaptation and found that the malaria vector in sub-Sahara, Anopheles gambiae was an ideal system to answer my questions, which later on became the major focus on my dissertation proposal. With the aid of grants from the Museum of Zoology and The International Institute as well as the support from Center for Tropical Research in UCLA and the vector genetics lab in UCDavis this year, I'm able to come here for the field work I've been dreamed of for two years.

Although my research interest is very much evolution-based, my field trip felt more like a public health study because of the nature of the species. Anopheles gambie females spend a lot of time inside human houses, hiding at dark spots near beds, on walls, roofs, inside bed nets, either waiting for chance to bite or resting to digest a delicious blood meal. We have to catch blood-fed females for chromosomal karyotyping work, which means we need to enter people's houses in villages. And that is not an easy task.

Sampling sites in the Adamawan Highlands. This region is the transition zone from forest to savanna habitats, harboring high diversity of inversion polymorphism.

En route
As the transition area from forest to savanna ecozones, Adamawa is one of the least developed provinces in Cameroon. Road condition is really poor in the majority of the area so that a jeep or a truck is a must to move around. Starting from Yaoundé, we drove up north through the west province. Paved road stopped right after Foumban, which is near the border of Adamawa. And soon I found myself jolting on the muddy road, moving less than 30km per hour, without knowing that the rest of the journey would be pretty much like this or even worse. Bankim is our first site. Located near the reservoir Bankim, it enjoys the last bit of forest habitat before transition to wet savanna. The reservoir also serves as a good breeding site for mosquito larva.

Bankim

forest nearby

Reservoir Bankim

As a cheaper alternative to paved road, mud road functions well in dry seasons here. However, after one or two months of heavy rains, the road will soon be damaged by over-loaded trucks. Driving through uneven grounds with big rocks and ponds, my driver Elvis had to constantly swerve from one side to another. We can occasionally find Anopheles larva at the temporary ponds at the road side. When we reached the second site, Mbakaou, at the reservoir Mbakaou, our truck had a major repair to fix the brake, the battery and change the bearing of a tire. On the road to the province capital, Ngaoundéré, the LCD of my laptop got broken and the truck went to the garage for repair again. Bad road severely impairs the development. On the whole way of driving through the province, we rarely see any private cars or trucks. We were stuck for about two hours because the truck sank into the mud once. And surprisingly, there were only three trucks waiting behind us. It didn't cause a traffic jam or anything because there were simply no vehicles. Most people prefer to travel by train on the single railway from Ngaoundere to Yaounde. The demand way passes the supply. People were queuing for a standing ticket for hours because seat or sleeper class tickets will be sold out very very quickly. Despite the bad road, the best time en route was when occasionally we met a section of uphill paved road. Overlooking the savanna valley, we felt like we were the only beholder of the vast land. And then there came thatch-roofed huts, cattle herds and people.

on the way from Bankim to Tibati, Mbakaou; Wet savanna habitat

our truck got over-heated after Elvis managed to pull it out of a pile of mud

Reservoir Mbakaou provides a good amount of fish for the local people, as well as Anopheles mosquitoes

Cattle herds; Unlike deers in North America, cows here don't move when seeing vehicles. They only move aside when our truck almost hit them.

Originated in Asia, the humped zebu cattle are everywhere now in Africa. They are the major meat source in Northern Cameroon, especially among Muslims.

North of the Mount Ngaoundere starts the dry savanna. Mbe belongs to the North province and we could feel the increase in the temperature instantly.

Catching mosquitoes
How much communication with local people has to be done before we can get the permission to catch a mosquito inside a village house? I would say a lot. Upon reaching each town, we had to visit the administrative chief of the district, explain our purpose, show the order mission and get his signature. Then we would stop by the health center of the region, notifying the doctor and asking him to help us find local volunteers. Local guides then lead us to different villages in the district and explain to local people about our purpose in either French or local language. Since I don't speak French, these communications are done by my field assistant, Seraphin. Most of the time I had no idea what they said, and Seraphin was used to translate a twenty minute conversation into two sentences. Quite the same experience as that in the movie, "Lost in Translation". When people in the villages got to know exactly what we were going to do, they would be very cooperative. After greeting me with "Bonjour, Madame", they would say "entre, entre" when I intended to take off my shoes if they have floor mats on the ground. People in the villages are nice and honest. They might or might not lock the doors when they leave to work in the farm, but no one will enter the house without the host's permission. It's common to see shops wide open without the shopkeepers, who come back half an hour later. But nothing will be stolen. After finishing the mosquito catch in a village, we sometimes find a big sac of peanuts at the back of our truck as a gift from local people.

We usually do catching twice a day. In mornings from 8-12, we search for mosquitoes inside people's houses, especially bedrooms, using torches. Mosquitoes like dark areas. And they take big advantages on the holes on bed nets. Newly treated bed nets prevent us from catching a single female even using insecticide, but worn bed nets with big holes typically trap 1-20 blood fed mosquitoes. Unfortunately, it was usually old women or men who were using those old bed nets and got bitten terribly. I wish I could speak their local language and say "I'm sorry for the living condition, but thank you for contributing to my study". Mosquitoes are not a quick flyer. We use aspirators to suck them inside a tube when we spot them and blow them into a vial. Typical walls are bricks and mud, rarely concrete. Thatch roof is common. It blocks the sun, so inside it's always cool regardless of the temperature outside. But people are starting to switch to zinc roof for its fire resistance. Mosquitoes love hanging on the thatch roofs. Those that are caught in over-heated zinc houses are usually more fragile. Painted walls ease our search because otherwise their dark body hides well on mud walls.

Seraphin took out tools and gave them to local volunteers

Culex and Anopheles are the two genera that would be commonly found inside houses. Anopheles, however, prefer rural areas much more. The species I'm interested in, An.gambiae, dominates the catch in most sites except for Bankim. At the end of rainy season there, An. funestus is more common. Both of them are notorious severe malaria vectors. Mosquitoes caught in the morning would be reared in vials and fed sugar water to make sure that they digest the blood properly and develop big ovaries.

a good catch

In the afternoon, we do spray catching by directly killing mosquitoes using insecticide and let them fall on white sheets spread on the ground because that's the time when most of the female are half-gravid (i.e., blood is half digested and ovaries have accumulated a lot of eggs). We then kill the morning batch and dissect ovaries out. That can last forever depending on the quantity we catch. We celebrated a good catch with a good meal late in the evening. If it was a bad one, obviously we would have more time eating and drinking!

Dr. Atangana adjusting the microscope for dissection.

Sadou, the best mosquito catcher from the whole trip. He can literally see mosquitoes that I would otherwise never notice.

Life in the villages
Work is highly divided between men and women here. Men go to farms, rear cattle, ride motorcycle taxis, or sit together drinking Sha-y (a kind of sweet herbal tea) for the whole day. Women prepare food, take care of kids, wash clothes and give birth. Violation of the common division of work is considered bad. Usually, when we visit people's houses in the morning, there are only women, pre-school kids and old people. Polygamy is prevalent here. As explained by Seraphin and a local volunteer, Sadou, it is partly because girls over number boys and it's usually difficult for a girl to find a reliable husband. Sadou, a typical Muslim living near Ngaoundere, has two wives in the villages and one in the city. He's only 35 and already has eight kids. He said he should have another wife and at least another two kids. Interestingly, he got a chance to get a fourth wife in Mbe. One afternoon, we sprayed a house and caught a lot of blood-fed mosquitoes. The old woman was so grateful for our work as she thought she'd have peaceful sleep for three weeks. She told Sadou she's willing to give her daughter to him. When I heard Seraphin's translation, they saw my mouth wide open and laughed, saying that that's how people behave here, that's how people regard marriage here. The whole thing is about finding a hard-working guy with means or finding a well-behaved girl who can give birth.

a woman carrying stuff on her head, with a child on her back and probably pregnant

A typical bedroom

a lot of kids have huge tummies. I don't know if that was because of schistosoma in the pond.

Despite the poor living conditions, people are content with life here. It's hard to see people with miserable expressions. There is no electricity or water in most villages. They still lift water from wells, use bush light in the night and firewood for cooking. As a good habit of most tropical countries, they take baths every day at least once using collected rain or well water. Despite the muddy road, they still wash their motorcycles everyday, with a bucket of water. The town of Mbe only has three and half hours of electricity: 6:30-10pm. Nevertheless, Cameroonians cannot live without bars. People continue to drink in the darkness without lights or music in bars.

women selling peanuts

two grades in a single class

Children selling water and food to passengers

moto taxi drivers

I ate local food and drank local boisson for the whole journey. Although I was concerned about the cleanliness, especially about eating with hands, I didn't get diarrhea even once. I guess the fact that I grew up in China gave me a pretty strong stomach. Although the variety, taste and quantity of the food here correlates exactly with the economic status of the place, I think most of the food here is super healthy and organic. Because crops are all naturally farmed with less chemicals added. cattle eat fresh grass and walk long distances every day. I'm wondering how long can this natural way of farming last? When will cattle raising factories start to show up?

a typical meal in Muslim region: tomato soup with beef stew and a huge pile of rice

a woman cutting cassava

a typical Cameroonian meal: Foufou (maize flour made buns), Njamo Njamo (a leafy veggie) and beef stew

Then I sometimes wish the road would never be paved and industries will never come to destroy the beautiful land. But I know that's a too selfish idea. And I know their life has already been permanently influenced by manufactured goods. The most obvious example is the garbage. No recycling, no waste management whatsoever. You'll find piles of trash at a corner here or there in villages or towns. Organic matters go away very quickly, so only plastic bags, bottles, batteries lie there, probably forever. I wish these villages would never become as trashy as some of the Chinese villages. Sustainable development, that's possible, right?

smart usage of the roof

I'm looking forward to my sampling in the west province soon. Wait for my blog about new experience in three weeks!

Monkeying Around

2011-08-17T05:56:00.003-05:00

Thursday, August 4, 2011

A shorter offering from Kibale today--I caught this habituated group of black-and-white colobus frolicking on the ground in Lower Camp, where a few of us researchers are based in the Kanyawara research area. I've never observed unhabituated individuals doing this in the forest (which of course doesn't mean that they don't). In fact, away from camp, I've seen guerezas in trees that are less than 10-15 m tall only a handful of times since May. There's an undeniable grace in the earthbound hopping of these typically arboreal monkeys, though. Check out the video.

-LT

From London to Pittsburgh and finally Ann Arbor!

2011-08-01T13:46:00.022-05:00

My last few weeks in London mainly consisted of working with Edmund (the zoo and wildlife pathologist at ZSL) on snail dissections. There was a hiccup in my method and so we have had to modify our approach. Adult partulids are hermaphroditic and give birth to a single young every few weeks. The female reproductive tract usually bears multiple young at different stages of development. Dissections on Partula were done in a previous study by H.E. Crampton in 1916. Unfortunately, I currently have no access to detailed descriptions on how and when the dissections were done. The most current available specimen (P. clara) that we dissected was from 2004. Most of the specimens were a bit degraded and therefore, making it difficult to identify the tissues – especially the reproductive tract.

Edmund looking at Partula tissue under the microscope

We were not sure how long the tissues can be preserved in ethanol before it is no longer possible to detect offspring in the reproductive tract. However, we think that Crampton’s dissections were done shortly after he collected snails in the valleys of Tahiti. Usually when there are too many individuals in a container the zoo keepers decide to cull individuals if the population size gets too big, but these are rare events and because sometimes the animals are transferred to another tank (or another zoo) to start a new population. Unfortunately, there was no culling event while I was still at ZSL.

My specimens and dissection kit

ZSL collection of dead specimens

I also had my last meeting with Justin Gerlach in Cambridge again. This time was a lot easier because I finally had some data to work with. We ended up spending time in the Zoology department library to look up some references for the parameters used in the predator, prey and pathogen interactions model that he created for introduced snail populations like Achatina fulica (Giant African land snail) and Euglandina rosea (Rosy Wolf snail). We modified the pre-existing model so that we can test if the fecundity differences observed in P. clara and P. hyalina could have made the difference between persistence and extirpation. On a side note, I was quite awed by the painting of Charles Darwin near the library entrance. Apparently, Darwin went to the University of Cambridge, and so its Museum of Zoology displayed some of his works – including his insect collection.

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

Darwin's beetle collection

When not working on snail dissections or data appropriation, I venture out to see the sights, find good food, visit pubs, a music venue and of course, the London Zoo. The most memorable events happening while I was in London were Wimbledon and Test Cricket. I enjoyed the former because I sat on Henman Hill and watch Rafael Nadal beat England’s Andy Murray on the jumbo screen, but not so much the latter. I didn’t understand the objective so I Googled how to play it. Besides it can go on for multiple days.

Partula display at the Zoological Society of London

Blue and beautiful

Dinner with your feet on the table

I have just returned last week from the American Malacological Society Meeting held in Pittsburgh. I presented a poster on my preliminary findings and I think it was well received. Like everyone there, I am anticipating the outcome of the “Partula differential survival mystery.” I am now back in Ann Arbor working on my results, and as always, thanks for reading.

Until next time,

Cindy

On to Chicago

2011-07-18T17:12:00.012-05:00

"Shout if ya'll don't mind if I put on some Chi-town blues.”

"Yeah!"

“I heard one of you say ‘no,’ so I guess I can’t put it on!”

“Yeeeeaah!”

“Well OK, if no one's against hearing some old Chi-town blues.”

“Yeeeeaah!” (music begins with a strong electric bass; two young girls in front of us start swaying their heads in unison)

“My name’s Elliot and you’re on the Megabus from Ann Arbor to Chicago. (music volume rises). Welcome aboard. When you’re ready, jump up front and introduce yourself on the mic.” (passengers laugh, but no one actually gets up.)

I turn to my Ecuadorian partner sitting next to me, Alvaro Pérez, and confide, “para mi, viajar en bus vale la pena.”

---

Among the boons of travel are new foods, new personalities, new cultural traditions, new vistas, and new plant species. Unfortunately, for the most part these joys of travel are unilateral; a young traveler is usually accepting the favors and goodwill of strangers without the means to reciprocate. For once, this summer is different. After five weeks in Yasuní during which I relied heavily on the help and expertise of a young and talented Ecuadorian botanist named Alvaro Pérez, we traveled together to Ann Arbor where it was my turn to help him in one of his own projects, and introduce him to Michigan life. Just as he offered me his room at Yasuní, I invited him to stay at my Ann Arbor house. For the patience he showed me in tropical tree identification, I gave him the full Nat. Sci. tour and the basic lab protocols with which he has less experience. He took me to the bus to Coca, and I accompanied him on the bus to Chicago. A cultural and scientific exchange how it was meant to be done! (My continual gratitude to Dr. Christopher Dick (via a CTFS grant) and my own funding from U-Michigan’s own International Institute which helped make this possible.)

Now we’re on the Megabus, en route to the herbarium at the Chicago Field Museum, and I think that’s Buddy Guy on the stereo. Alvaro’s talking to some Mexican students sitting behind us, headed to Chicago for a law conference. We're going to use the Field Museum's large dried tropical plant collection to identify some of the unknown specimens we collected in the field. Stage three of our collaborative journey is underway.

Alvaro beside a young Pouteria, after demonstrating to me how to gather a leaf sample with a telescopic pruner.

Alvaro and I in the Dick lab, in front of the PCR machine and centrifuge.

Brief thoughts on conservation ethics from the field

2011-07-17T07:50:00.021-05:00

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

How are the principles of conservation realized, what values can be invested in ecosystem and wildlife health, in a place where agricultural development separates those who thrive from those who merely survive and where schoolchildren find casual sport, daily, in lobbing rocks at monkeys?

The boda boda's muted roar is a soothing accompaniment to these troubling thoughts on my way back to the Makerere University Biological Field Station (MUBFS) after another long day in the field.

Although it is easy to get caught up in the glamour of the field biologist's life, in which bragging rights are won with counts of ticks, mango flies (for another intrepid evolutionary biologist's adventures with parasitic flies, check out this Radiolab interview with Jerry Coyne), and dung samples rather than publication citation indices, the goals that motivate my nearly three-month long quest for guereza poo are never far from thought. Why am I so interested in dung?

Black-and-white monkeys (also known as guerezas) experienced habitat changes during climatic fluctuations ~1.2 million years ago and more recently because of human activities. Deforestation for agriculture and human settlement began about 1,000 years ago in Uganda, with commercial logging and farming still being practiced in the forests that now form Kibale National Park (KNP), which is home to guerezas and 11 other primate species, until 40 years ago. Even today, small-scale farms, tea plantations, eucalyptus groves, and villages abut and in some cases, are nested within, protected lands.

Kibale National Park is a mosaic landscape of human influence and protected forest.

My project examines the spatiotemporal effects of such habitat changes in guerezas: What are the patterns of gene flow and distribution of genetic variation in the species in southwestern Uganda, and how have historical climate-induced range shifts and contemporary anthropogenic population isolation contributed to these observed patterns?

And here the last question, which perhaps carries the greatest management implications: Why, among the common large-bodied, diurnal primates of the region, are guerezas more likely to occur in what cursorily can be considered suboptimal primate habitat? Surprisingly, in addition to their broad distribution across equatorial Africa, guerezas are more common in degraded and colonizing forests than undisturbed, old-growth forests, at least in Uganda. What is it about the species' biology, ecology, and/or evolutionary history that explains such a counterintuitive distribution? The dung samples (and the DNA in them) will allow me to tackle these questions head-on when I return to the lab in the Fall.

But until then, I'm enjoying life as a field evolutionary biologist/amateur primatologist and sampling guerezas as widely as possible in multiple forestry compartments (which differ in vegetation structure and composition because of independent logging histories) and several forest fragments. Two of my sites are forest fragments that adjoin the beautiful crater lakes of Kasenda and Nkuruba, which have been developed as tourist resorts. This, finally, brings me back to the opening questions. The few places where guerezas still occur outside of protected forest only exist because of their commercial value. Fragments which used to support populations but lacked marketable qualities in line with sustainable management were either cleared or developed--with their loss went the monkeys.

So ultimately, the idea of wildlife and ecosystems being conserved for their intrinsic values is a foreign concept here--preservation is tied to clear-eyed economic stratagems, as it is the world over. In less than fifty years from now, guerezas will be relegated to places like KNP and the crater lake resorts. Elsewhere they will disappear. For a Sand County Almanac-thumping treehugger like myself, this is a difficult reality to accept.

But, conservation is a value-based science that can produce amazing results if the appropriate stakeholders are interested and engaged in the process. And education is paramount to the success of any conservation scheme. Schoolchildren wouldn't be using endangered red colobus as target practice if they believe, deeply, in the value of wildlife and know how to interact appropriately with them. At KNP, the gap in conservation knowledge and practice is large but not insurmountable. Like NGO-sponsored health outreach (thanks to the biologists Colin and Lauren Chapman of McGill University) that brings hygienic practices into the classroom, school workshops that focus on teaching wildlife and ecosystem services and utilitarian values, rather than on more culturally difficult to grasp concepts like intrinsic value, can do much in fostering a more hospitable conservation environment. It won't change the system overnight, but it's a start.

In closing, I'll share a story that gives me reason to hope for the future of conservation in at least the KNP area. The play that closed the local Community Action Project's traditional music and dance show, held during my second week at MUBFS, featured a poacher who received just desserts for his crime. Perhaps the villagers were pandering to the sensibilities of us bazungu ("whites" but more correctly "foreigners"), but all that really matters is that the ethic exists for all open minds to consider. The willingness to adapt new ideas lies at the root of cultural change, wouldn't you agree?

-LT

Forest musings on the development of an ecologist

2011-07-08T22:58:00.019-05:00

Feebly brushing the mosquitoes from my ears today in the jungle, I thought about how the archetypal ecologist in my head is a marriage of contradictions: she has a global perspective with a love for minutiae; he is free thinking but with fastidious organization and robotic field practices; she is field hardened yet writes her own programs in Pearl. For what exactly does an aspiring ecologist strive, as the field of Ecology grows simultaneously broader and more specialized? Thinking about this potential paradox, I’ve been reading and comparing the lives of two all-star scientific personas (see the autobiography of BF by BF, and a biography of EH by Nancy Slack).

Benjamin Franklin / G. Evelyn Hutchinson

Was Benjamin Franklin / Won the Benjamin Franklin medal of honor

Founding father of USA / Founding father of Ecology

Wore a wig to the office / Wore a suit in the field (in high school)

Was a vegetarian in his twenties / Skinned animals for science in his twenties

Invented the lightening rod / Invented the N-hyperdimensional ecological niche

Negotiated with Indians / Collected water bugs in India

Was indefatigably curious / Was indefatigably curious

Wrote prodigiously / Wrote prodigiously

Loved art and music / Loved art and music

Knew everything / Knew everything

Argued for “the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study,” (in 1740!) / Supported female graduate students despite initial disapproval at Yale

Taught himself French, German, Greek, Latin / Taught himself Italian and Chinese and probably other languages

Furthered scientific discovery through careful experimentation / Furthered scientific discovery through careful experimentation

Initially, it seems, it is helpful for a scientist to be a polymath with a near-photographic memory and literary eloquence. But aside from that, both BF and EH supplemented their genius with dogged persistence in their areas of excellence. This latter habit was arguably more responsible for their contributions to the scientific community. Franklin, for example, started a secret club (a “Junta”) with some friends to practice discussing literature, science, and social reform decades before he ascended to national repute. Hutchinson was an avid freshwater naturalist, with ecological tendencies, by the age of fifteen. Imagine what I would know about Pouteria trees if I had been collecting samples and making field observations for the past eleven years! Expounding upon this sentiment, here is an excerpt from a letter Hutchinson wrote from a cafe in England to a beginning graduate student studying the ecological implications of Daphniidae morphological variation:

I have thought a lot about your project. First a piece of general observation. Practically nobody has ever done any good work by setting up a detailed project ahead of time and then carrying out all the projected details in order. One can start out and get a lot of data; when it has become familiar, the new implications appear while drying a cup or getting into a car, in a quite unpredictable way. This I fancy only happens if one really knows a lot of factual material got with our own hands and allowed to dance around in our unconscious. -1969 (pg. 12)

That sounds like something Ben Franklin would say! In any case, perhaps the value Hutchinson ascribes to data collection “with our own hands” and time assuages my suspicions of the aforementioned “marriage of contradictions” I feel is expected from today’s modern ecologist. That is, maybe there is an advantage to a career which weds months of mosquito swatting (I say that affectionately; sorry Qixin), lab work, and R statistics, and that shifting mental gears from robotic to philosophical is mutually constructive. Alternatively, perhaps that’s a path best left to the polymaths of yore, and it’s time for us normal folk to choose a side and specialize. For the moment, I'm banking on the former.

A five-part offering to the eeblog from John. Part 1: The Yasuní herbarium and an overview.

2011-07-06T19:08:00.004-05:00

When it rains here, which is constantly, I’m relegated to the Yasuní herbarium where I study tropical leaf morphology and current events from the late 1990’s as reported from Ecuador. Today, in the Sapotaceae section, Michael Jordan y los Bulls ganaron su segundo "three-peat" and the “Guerra de las Galaxias, Episodio Uno” opened in theaters. As for many botanists, the old newspaper sheets used to dry and press plant specimens for herbarium storage can occasionally distract me from my work. For my own collections, I’ve recently hit a noteworthy stratum from the stack of yellowing pages in the lab corner: replicate of copies of “Transparencia Pura,” a fashion featurette that is more risqué than the journalism to which North American plants are accustomed.

Now in my third week of fieldwork in Yasuní National Park, Ecuador, my mission is foremost to collect vouchers from the taxonomically-confused pantropical genus Pouteria. To systematists, Pouteria has been a closet in which to stuff things (over 400 species with 60 generic synonyms!). It has undergone circumscription revisions in 1939, 1964, 1965, 1991, and more recently has been found by molecular approaches to be widely paraphyletic. Despite its resistance to morphological classification, what Al Gentry calls a “chaotic” taxonomic history, Pouteria is clearly very diverse. Indeed, taxonomists at Yasuní have identified 34 (!) Pouteria “morphotypes” in just a 50-hectare space, placing it among the richest tree genera present in this slice of Amazonia. Less than half of the morphotypes have been formally identified by specialists, and instead have temporary names (many of which might not pass official review: “Big Yellow,” “Wide Slick,” “Little Round.”). To this, I have my general questions: How many of these morphotypes are actually species (In Pouteria, and throughout all taxa)? How many morphotypes represent multiple cryptic species? Is Pouteria an ‘old’ genus? Is Pouteria so diverse merely because it is a taxonomic frankenstein, or have evolutionary circumstances enhanced speciation rates and/or mitigated extinctions relative to other tropical trees? If the latter is true, how do so many Pouteria presently co-exist? Are Pouteria species functionally equivalent, or have they specialized into microhabitats and thus escaped strong potential competition? Of course, such questions warrant years of study, and I have only one summer! Babysteps.

Today, waylaid by the rain still crashing upon the roof above me, I only give a general introduction to my work and environs. Over a series of five posts, I’ll use this blog to articulate in writing some of the facts and facets of my field season, and some questions arising. For now, back to the stacks.

Snail Adventures

2011-07-04T15:21:00.020-05:00

A snail named Cindy Bick. Artist: Paul Pearce-Kelly

Well it has been quite a while since my last post. Things have been quite busy for me at ZSL. I’ve been extracting demographic data from the ZSL database, travelling to meet with one of my research collaborators, and getting training in captive snail husbandry. I’ve also spent some time dissecting partulid specimens from their extensive preserved death assemblage (many were culled due to overproduction) to generate a complementary fecundity estimate to a previous study done in the early 1900s.

I’m amazed at the amount of data that ZSL has amassed on Partula. Fortunately for me, the zoo populations include Tahitian partulids: Partula hyalina and P. clara as well as valley species that did not survive in the wild, e.g., P. nodosa & P. affinis. These captive lines have been carefully maintained for 20 + years and a large amount of demographic data have been recorded: growth rate, longevity and reproductive rate per holding tank of captive snails. As mentioned in the last post, the difficult part is that these data are still in a raw form and have not been collated and analyzed comparatively.

Adult Partula clara with an English penny for scale

Having the time of my life extracting data

As soon as the organizational part is over I can then narrow my focus on the data analysis. If the captive demographic data corroborate higher fecundities for Tahitian valley survivors relative to extirpated valley species, the rest of my thesis will involve applying those values to simulations involving a pre-existing model of Rosy Wolf Snail predation to test if those fecundity differences alone could have made the difference between persistence and extirpation.

Justin Gerlach, who set up the Rosy Wolf predation model, is teaching at Cambridge University and is one of our collaborators on this project. His Ph.d. work was on predator, prey, and pathogen interactions in introduced snail populations – specifically the Rosy Wolf Snail (Euglandina rosea) and the Giant African Land Snail (Achatina fulica). It was quite an adventure taking the train to Cambridge, but I eventually met up with Justin. Our first meeting was quite productive. We mainly discussed what the different mathematical parameters for his predator-prey cycle model meant and how the values were calculated. This took quite some time as there were many germane details in his publications and/or in his thesis manuscript that were unclear to me.

Partula display at the London Zoo

During the remaining time he gave me a tour around the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology and the Zoology department. Along the way, we had a friendly discussion about the merits of the U.S. education system. I asked him about research in the Zoology department at Cambridge University and he asked me about the University of Michigan and its Ecology and Evolutionary department (Yikes! I hope I gave a good impression of our program). I then took some time exploring the city of Cambridge before heading off to wait for the train back to London.

Kings College, Cambridge University

My next snail adventure will probably be about my snail dissections (Stay tuned for next time!). Thanks for reading and wishing you all a great 4^th of July from London!

UM EEB Ph.D. alumnus blogging for the New York Times from Madagascar

2011-06-22T09:50:00.002-05:00

From the New York Times, Wednesday, June 22, 2011, Scientist at Work, Notes From the Field blog by John S. Sparks, UM EEB Ph.D. alumnus (2001) and Christopher Braun.

Sparks, curator of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History, writes from Madagascar, where he is studying cave fish. Sparks was a student of Professor Bill Fink’s at the Museum of Zoology. See more of Sparks’ blog posts here.

Greetings from London

2011-06-16T11:14:00.010-05:00

16 June 2011

Hello and thanks for reading one of my many posts (stay tuned!) from London. During my first few weeks at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL, also known as the London Zoo), I have learned a bit about what goes on in a typical day for a keeper at the world’s oldest scientific zoo, did my best to understand what the Brits are saying (I’m slowly getting used to it), collaborated with a lot of great individuals maintaining the animal records for the partulid species management program, and of course – trying to get over my jet lag. Some of you are probably wondering what I’m doing in London if I’m supposed to be studying Tahitian partulid tree snails. The logical starting point would be to give you a bit of background information.

The problem

Keepers at the London Zoo maintain many of the records associated with the many vertebrates and invertebrates collection kept here. For the purposes of my project, I am only interested in the invertebrate collection, which also includes breeding programs for endangered species such as Partula snails. One of the most infamous recent cases of endemic mass extinctions has involved the well-known endemic partulid tree snail fauna of the Society Islands, French Polynesia. In the 1970s, a misguided biological control program introduced the carnivorous Rosy Wolf Snail (Euglandina rosea), a Florida native, to French Polynesia. The (misguided) rationale was that it would control another invasive (the Giant African land snail) that had become an agricultural pest. Unfortunately, the predator’s major impact was on the endemic snail fauna and it directly caused the mass extinction in the wild of all but 5 of 61 endemic Society Island partulids; approximately half of all species in this Pacific Island land snail family. Emergency interventions in the 1980s and 1990s led to the successful establishment of international captive populations for 15 Society Island species that are coordinated by the Partulid Global Species Management Programme headed by Paul Pearce-Kelly at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Adult Partula with the fully formed lip

Elaine demonstrates how the Partula species database works and what the different parameters mean.

Don, one of the keepers responsible working on the global species management program for Partula cleans the containers and records all of the individuals as well as the different development stages (newborn, juvenile, subadult, and adult).

The role of a good zoo

Ongoing surveys in the island of Tahiti have shown that some of the partulid species (P. clara and P. hyalina) have continued to persist. This is most surprising because predation models predict partulid snail extirpation within three years of initial predator contact. The captive populations at the London Zoo provide a “common garden experiment” where environmental differences are minimized and endogenous differences in demography are tractable.
Fortunately, the zoo populations include Tahitian partulids: P. hyalina and P. clara as well as valley species that did not survive in the wild, e.g., P. nodosa & P. affinis. These captive lines have been carefully maintained for 20+ years and a large amount of demographic data has been recorded at the ZSL: growth rate, longevity and reproductive rate per holding tank of captive snails. However, these data are still in a raw form and have not been collated and analyzed comparatively. So, my primary goal would be to access and extract these captive demographic data and to analyze them quantitatively. Containers with individual species of Partula

That’s it for now, stay tuned for my many more snail adventures!!!

Hi from Kibale National Park, Uganda

2011-06-12T05:26:00.018-05:00

The locals who work in Kibale National Park (KNP) like to say, "In the forest, we use our eyes, ears, and legs".

Monday, May 30, 2011

I spend my first day of fieldwork following my field assistant, Richard Karamagi, through compartment K30 of Kanyawara. Centrally-located Ngogo and Kanyawara in the northwest are the two main research areas of KNP.

Richard, a native of the Toro Kingdom in western Uganda, is a taciturn man whose infrequent laughter rings with boyish glee. Over the next few days, we bond over little things, such as being born in the same month, as well as our mutual curiosity about the other's world. But on this day, Richard teaches me how to find black and white monkeys (Colobus guereza) in the forest. With the monkeys' preference for resting in 30-50 m tall trees, sometimes in densely-forested patches where sunlight shines feebly through thick canopy, this is no easy thing.

Tail view.

The forest is a magical place, resounding with life. It is a pulsing symphony of wind-tossed leaves, creaking branches, and the myriad calls of crickets, cicadas, hornbills, baboons, chimpanzees, red colobus, etc. It is never quiet. I realize this as I walk/stumble along the trails after Richard, pushing to keep up with him in the heat and humidity, and it surprises me. My prior imaginings of the African forest as a tranquil place I ascribe to a tendency to romanticize.

Richard shows me the open places in the forest which the monkeys are thought to favor, the trees (Celtis durandii, C. africana, and more) that are their preferred food. I mentally file these observations with the other trivia about the monkeys that I've learned from the literature. As we scan the trees for black and whites (as they are known here), I begin to feel a kinship with the visual predators of the world. I imagine myself as a crowned hawk-eagle (one of the monkey's main predators) scanning treetops for furtive primates. I look for suspect dark shapes on branches, for distinctive long black tails swathed in cottony white at the tips dangling among the leaves. In other words, I develop a search image. Even an act as natural as seeing is transmuted in the forest.

A group in the Valley of Elephants, basking in the knowledge that I can't sample them because of, well, the elephants.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

This morning we start trekking at 7:30 but don't spot a group until 9:15 in K30, a compartment that has never been commercially logged. We settle under the Olea welwitschii tree on which the monkeys are resting, attempt to determine the sex and age of each visible individual, and wait.

By this, the third day of fieldwork, I have begun to learn the best characteristics for differentiating between male and female monkeys when said individuals are 30-50 m up and are more often than not partially obscured by vegetation. Glimpses of nipples and genitalia are the most edifying, but many times relative size is all we have to judge from.

While finding the black and whites inarguably is the most frustrating part of the fieldwork, waiting for them to defecate so that we may collect fecal samples is both irksome, because sometimes they don't if we catch them at the wrong time, and tedious, because sometimes it may take several hours. Today we are lucky; we wait only 45 minutes.

I've come to think of finding fecal pellets deposited in undergrowth and forest litter from great heights as akin to looking for the prize in a scavenger hunt. In both, you attend to clues. Most of the senses are engaged in recognizing the clues in this particular game--the glint of urine drops on leaves, the buzzing of flies and dung beetles, and finally, the distinctive woodsy smell of guereza poo.

Nearly like manna from heaven.

In deep hunting mode, I move across the site, scan the ground for fecal pellets, distractedly pull at stems and leaves obscuring my view, step on crunchy leaf litter--generally not noticing anything around me and contributing my fair share to the soundtrack of the forest. So it comes as a complete surprise when Richard whispers to me from about 5 m away, "Elephants. We need to go." I take a few seconds to process what he has just said, and then I hear them. There's no trumpeting or anything else that would obviously signal that potentially dangerous 12,000-lb. mammals were less than 15 m away from us--just the jarring sounds of branches cracking and underbrush being trampled.

"Danger" explodes in my mind and I start running toward Richard, who has his hand outstretched toward me. But then I think of my backpack, with the ten samples that we'd just collected nestled inside, and hesitate. Images of my newfound prizes being trampled or tossed about by uncaring, scientifically-uninterested elephants flit through my mind. I look toward where the elephants (which I can't see) are, vacillate, and then run back to grab my backpack. Then we run up the trail, in the direction opposite to that of the elephants.

Only after we reach relative safety away from the valley do I realize what an incredibly asinine thing running back for my backpack was. Not only did I take a chance with my own life, I also had put Richard's at risk for ten samples. No amount of samples is worth that. Luck was truly on our side today, since the three elephants decided for whatever reason only they can understand not to attack. Elephants are serious business in the forest and anywhere they wind up. Just a few weeks ago a man was killed by elephants while protecting his crops in the nearby Kasese district. (If you need convincing check out chapter 18 of Gordon Grice's Deadly Kingdom: The Book of Dangerous Animals.)

So today I learned the importance of the latter two-thirds of the locals' adage--take heed of what your ears tell you and use your legs if necessary in the forest--and relearned the humbling lesson that I can still be an idiot at the advanced age of 26. I will take the advice of a few more seasoned researchers at the field station should I come across elephants again--drop everything and run.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Today we head back to compartment K15, which suffered from heavy selective logging nearly 43 years ago, to revisit the group that eluded us yesterday afternoon. I've gotten used to waking up before 7 (those of you who know me well should be very, very impressed) to get out into the field by 7:30, even on Saturdays. I work six days a week in the field and take only Sundays off; many of the locals, including Richard, are steadfast churchgoing folk.

The hike from Lower Camp to K15 takes us about 45 minutes at a moderately brisk pace, but once we're in the forest, we spot the group after only half an hour. The group scatters, with individuals frantically crossing to other trees, as we approach. We settle down and wait; the monkeys quieten down and hide. Unhabituated groups are difficult to work with because of their instinctive fear (rightfully so) of humans. Today we have no better luck than yesterday. After we wait for three hours, the monkeys decide that they have tolerated our presence for long enough and flee across the treetops, without dropping any fecals.

Compartment K15.

We head out to another part of the compartment and quickly find another group. Fortunately the monkeys in this one are resting near the top of an Olea tree, so it is easy for us to sneak underneath without attracting their attention. Unfortunately for us the rain soon follows. From naive Internet research and readings, I know that Uganda has two main rainy seasons, one in March-May and the second in October-November. I would like to qualify for any interested persons that those are the peak rainy periods--there is no such thing as the end of the rainy "season" here.

At first, I'm miserable as I slip and slide the 45 minutes back to camp in the heavy downpour, with thunder pealing in all directions around us, in my sodden field pants and squelching hiking boots. But then I hear the birds calling and crickets chirping through the pelting of rain on my hood and realize that this is part and parcel of why I came to Kibale in the first place. There will be good days, with uneventful but fruitful sample collection, and other days such as this one during which nothing seems to work. Such is life in the field.

I return to camp and then head to the closest town, Fort Portal, in a taxi to do the coming week's grocery shopping for my house and run other errands. I will write about Fort Portal later, but for now, marvel at these Cadbury chocolate bars that I found. Kenyans know how to enjoy their chocolate.

We are excited to get the EEBlog started!

2011-06-08T20:30:00.001-05:00

Hi everyone,
We are looking forward to signing up UM EEB graduate student bloggers who are conducting research anywhere around the world, including right here in Ann Arbor! Post a comment here if you'd like to take part and I'll send you an invitation to post. The beauty of it is that the more bloggers we have, the less often everyone needs to post to keep the blog active and interesting. We look forward to reading about your summer research adventures.

To all, be one of the first to sign up to follow the EEBlog. Happy summer!