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EXPLORING
THE UNEXPLORED
Once Jennings has finished compiling and examining the data, she will share the findings and a final report with the Vanuatu Environmental Unit as part of the education and outreach component of her research. In an effort to better identify the most important ecological concerns, this will allow the precious and limited financial and human resources of the island nation to be targeted based on solid science. “We are helping the Vanuatu government identify, protect, and preserve areas with large species diversity, as well as high levels of genetic diversity,” says Jennings. “Because they have few resources, we want to help identify the most valued areas to focus conservation efforts.” At the end of her summer field research, which was funded by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, Jennings completed the largest herpetological survey in the island nation’s history. The specimens and DNA samples she gathered now reside in the LSU Museum of Natural Science, where Jennings is currently completing a genetic analysis. DNA sequence data will help her test hypotheses about the relationships among the native lizard species, how they evolved, and even how they ultimately came to Vanuatu. “Lizards have been very successful at colonizing the far flung islands in the Pacific Ocean, often across thousands of kilometers of open ocean,” says Austin, whose research focuses on reptiles and amphibians of New Guinea. “These colonization events via natural over-water dispersal, with lizards likely rafting on fallen trees, set the stage for the high levels of diversity found in the Pacific today.” The high point of Jennings’ survey was the discovery of two new species of lizards that were not previously known to science. Her discovery allows her the honor of naming the species and plays a critical role in documenting and describing the poorly understood biodiversity of the region. Jennings’ research will allow the Vanuatu government to compete more effectively for limited international aid, which is often dependent on conservation. Both Jennings and Austin emphasize that patterns of both species and genetic diversity found in lizards potentially will be mirrored for other species in Vanuatu. Understanding the role of geology and ecology in shaping lizard biodiversity will likely shed light on the genetic structure of the entire fauna and flora of the archipelago. ON
THE WEB: from Fall 2004
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Over
the past summer, Ali Jennings, a Ph.D. student in the Department
of Biological Sciences and the Museum of Natural Science, and
her team of three U.S. undergraduate students awoke at 5:30 every
morning to travel the villages, forests, gardens, and plantations
of Vanuatu in search of lizards. She and her adviser, Chris Austin,
assistant curator of the Museum of Natural Science, are not only
interested in locating and identifying lizard species, but also
how lizards colonized the Vanuatu archipelago, and how subsequent
isolation has influenced their evolution. Vanuatu’s islands
were created by underwater volcanoes nearly two million years
ago. Therefore, these oceanic islands have never been part of
a larger land mass, such as nearby continents Asia or Australia.