Conference Addressed Mysteries of Madagascar's Rich but Threatened Biodiversity
“It wasn’t easy to get to Madagascar, but once organisms did, they went crazy,” said Duke Lemur Center director Anne Yoder.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
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Durham, N.C. -- An international group of some three dozen experts met here at
the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center June 14-16 to develop
research and conservation strategies for Madagascar, a Texas-sized
island off the coast of Africa with a puzzlingly rich history of
biodiversity and significant contemporary environmental
problems.
Madagascar is a "most special place," said Anne Yoder, director of the Duke Lemur Center and co-organizer of the conference. Much of its current plant and animal life -- including all the world's lemurs -- descended from organisms thought to have come from Africa by crossing 300 miles of Indian Ocean waters during "freak rafting events" during the past 88 millions years, she said.
After making landfall, these hitchhiking founder stocks evolved into many new forms to adapt to the island’s different "microclimates, microhabitats and microecosystems," she added. "Almost every species is now unique to Madagascar. You really don't see that in other places," Yoder said.
“It wasn’t easy to get to Madagascar, but once organisms did, they went crazy,” she said. “It has been sort of a speciation machine, and we’re just starting to figure out how that has worked.”
Scientists find themselves regularly discovering new species of all kinds, Yoder said. For instance, the documented number of different mouse lemurs –- a group Yoder studies -– has jumped from two to nine within the past 15 years.
“If we’re finding that much diversity in the creatures we’re focusing our attention on, just think about the numbers of undiscovered insects and plants and rodents,” she said. “We’re just scratching the surface.”
But the island's natural riches are threatened, according to organizers of the conference, titled “Historical Perspectives on the Distribution of Biodiversity in Madagascar.”
Various scientists have designated Madagascar as "one of the most critical geographic priorities for conservation action,” according to Yoder and conference co-organizer Claire Kremen of the University of California at Berkeley.
With less than 10 percent of the natural habitats that existed before human colonization still remaining, “human pressures associated with subsistence activities have been extremely destructive,” they said.
This is not a case of degradation by ruthless developers, Yoder stressed. “It’s just people trying to eke out a living," she said. "And it’s hard to tell someone that lemurs are more important than feeding their kids.”
Preliminary conference goals were to “battle plans for the future on both the scientific and conservation fronts,” Yoder said.
The research plan will focus on using the latest tools of science to better explain how Madagascar’s now-threatened biodiversity grew so rich. "How did all of those organisms get there, when did they get there, and what were the effects?” Yoder summarized.
“Step number two is to take that information and use it in a constructive way to plan for the future and how to protect what’s still there,” she said.
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center is a collaboration of three institutions -- Duke University, North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -- and is funded by the National Science Foundation. Its goal is to explore evolutionary biology through an interdisciplinary synthesis of theory, research and education.