Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

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Fine motor skills for robotic hands

Tying shoelaces, stirring coffee, writing letters, playing the piano. From the usual daily routine to demanding activities: Our hands are used more frequently than any other body part. Through our highly developed fine motor skills, we are able to perform grasping movements with variable precision and power distribution. This ability is a fundamental characteristic of the hand of primates. Until now, it was unclear how hand movements are planned in the brain. The most recent research project of Stefan Schaffelhofer, Andres Agudelo-Toro and Hansjörg Scherberger from the German Primate Center has shown how different grasping movements in the brain are controlled in rhesus monkeys. Using electrophysiological measurements in those areas of the brain that are responsible for the planning and execution of hand movements, the scientists could predict a variety of hand positions through the analysis of exact neural signals. In initial experiments, the application of decrypted grip types was transferred to a robot hand. The results of the study will be incorporated in the future development of neuroprostheses, which will be used to enable paralyzed patients the recovery of hand functions.

“We wanted to find out how different hand movements are controlled by the brain and whether it was possible to use the activity of nerve cells to predict different grip types,” says Stefan Schaffelhofer, neuroscientist in the Neurobiology Laboratory of the DPZ.

Within the framework of his PhD thesis, he intensively dealt with those brain areas of the cerebral cortex, which are responsible for the planning and execution of hand movements. In the course of his studies, he found out that visual information for objects that can be gripped, especially their three-dimensional shape and size are mainly processed in the AIP region. The transmission of the visual characteristics of an object in corresponding movement commands is mainly controlled in the areas F5 and M1.

To research the regulation of various grip movements in these regions of the brain in detail, the activity was recorded from neurons with so-called multi electrode arrays. The researchers have trained the rhesus monkeys to repeatedly grasp 50 objects of different shapes and sizes. In order to identify the grip types and to compare them with the neural signals, an electromagnetic data glove was used to record all the finger and hand movements of monkeys.

“Prior to the start of a grasping movement, we have illuminated all the objects so that the monkeys could see them and recognize their shape,” said Stefan Schaffelhofer. “The subsequent grasping movement then took place in the dark with a short delay. We were then able to separate the responses of the neurons to the visual stimuli in motor signals as well as examine the phase of motion planning.”

Based on the activity of nerve cells measured during the planning and execution of the grasping movements, scientists could subsequently draw conclusions on the applied grip types. The predicted grips were compared to the actual hand configurations in the experiment.

“The activity of the measured brain cells is strongly dependent on the grip that was applied. Based on these neural differences, we can calculate the hand movement of the animal” says Stefan Schaffelhofer. “In the planning phase we predicted hand configurations with an accuracy of up to 86% and 92% for the gripping phase.

The decrypted hand configurations were subsequently successfully transferred to a robotic hand. With this, the scientists have shown that a large number of different hand configurations can be decoded and used from neuronal planning and execution signals. A finding, that is of great importance for the future of especially paraplegic patients where the connection between the brain and limbs no longer functions.

“The results of our study are very important for the development of neural-controlled prosthetic hands. They show where and especially how the brain controls grasping movements,” Stefan Schaffelhofer summarizes. “Unlike other applications, our method allows a prediction of the grip types in the planning phase of the movement. In future, this can be used to generate neural interface to read, interpret and control the motoric signals.”

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by German Primate Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Fossil ankles indicate Earth’s earliest primates lived in trees

Earth’s earliest primates have taken a step up in the world, now that researchers have gotten a good look at their ankles.

A new study has found that Purgatorius, a small mammal that lived on a diet of fruit and insects, was a tree dweller. Paleontologists made the discovery by analyzing 65-million-year-old ankle bones collected from sites in northeastern Montana.

Purgatorius, part of an extinct group of primates called plesiadapiforms, first appears in the fossil record shortly after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. Some researchers have speculated over the years that primitive plesiadapiforms were terrestrial, and that primates moved into the tree canopy later. These ideas can still be found in some textbooks today.

“The textbook that I am currently using in my biological anthropology courses still has an illustration of Purgatorius walking on the ground. Hopefully this study will change what students are learning about earliest primate evolution and will place Purgatorius in the trees where it rightfully belongs,” said Stephen Chester, the paper’s lead author. Chester, who conducted much of the research while at Yale University studying for his Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Chester is also a curatorial affiliate at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Until now, paleontologists had only the animal’s teeth and jaws to examine, which left much of its appearance and behavior a mystery. The identification of Purgatorius ankle bones, found in the same area as the teeth, gave researchers a better sense of how it lived.

“The ankle bones have diagnostic features for mobility that are only present in those of primates and their close relatives today,” Chester said. “These unique features would have allowed an animal such as Purgatorius to rotate and adjust its feet accordingly to grab branches while moving through trees. In contrast, ground-dwelling mammals lack these features and are better suited for propelling themselves forward in a more restricted, fore-and-aft motion.”

The research provides the oldest fossil evidence to date that arboreality played a key role in primate evolution. In essence, said the researchers, it implies that the divergence of primates from other mammals was not a dramatic event. Rather, primates developed subtle changes that made for easier navigation and better access to food in the trees.

The research appears in the Jan. 19 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Yale University. The original article was written by Jim Shelton. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — The trouble started when a British company suddenly appeared in this iconic and spectacularly beautiful national park, prospecting for oil.Villagers who opposed the project were beaten by government soldiers. A park warden, who tried to block the oil company, SOCO International, from building a cellphone tower in the park, was kidnapped and tortured. Virunga’s director, a Belgian prince, was shot and nearly killed hours after he delivered a secret report on the oil company’s activities.Much like the fight over drilling on federal lands in the United States, the struggle over oil exploration in Africa’s national parks is a classic quandary, pitting economic development against environmental preservation.But out here, the quest for oil seems to be more volatile, and the stakes are arguably higher — on both sides.While West Africa has been a major hydrocarbon producer for decades, new technology like deeper drilling has led to a bonanza of new energy discoveries here on the continent’s east side.Oil companies are now circling several African parks like this one, home to critically endangered wildlife, such as colossal silverback mountain gorillas, among the last of their kind.But development is far more than just a buzzword here. The people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, northern Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique — all places of recent hydrocarbon finds — are among the poorest in the world, many without electricity or clean water, their children often facing relentless illness and few prospects.African governments say they have a moral obligation to pursue anything that might lift their countries out of grinding poverty, including drilling for oil in pristine natural environments.With an unprecedented surge of oil activity in this region, environmentalists vowed to “draw the line” here in Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park and a Unesco World Heritage Site, protected for its “outstanding universal value” to all humankind. The World Wildlife Fund swung into action, signing up hundreds of thousands of supporters in a global campaign.Continue reading the main story

Conflicts Over Africa’s Wilderness

The hunt for resources is putting pressure on pristine wilderness areas in Eastern and Central Africa, including Virunga National Park, the continent’s oldest national park.

DEMOCRATIC

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OF CONGO

Murchison Falls National Park

DEMOCRATIC

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Continue reading the main story

In June, it made a triumphant announcement: “Major Conservation Win: Oil Company Backs Off Oil Exploration in Africa’s Oldest National Park.” It looked like a happy ending for the gorillas and the trees.There’s just one problem: It might not be true.In a private letter sent the same day the environmentalists were savoring their victory, SOCO International reassured the Congolese government that it was continuing to evaluate seismic data so that “the D.R.C. government can take all appropriate measures to pursue, or not, such exploration.”A few days later, the company’s chairman, Rui de Sousa, said at SOCO’s annual general meeting, “We have not pulled out.”Virunga’s champions say that if they lose the battle here, it will open the floodgates to drilling in protected spaces across the continent.The park is considered one of the most biodiverse slices of the planet. Its savannas of yellow grass, towering volcanoes bubbling with lava, jungles, swamps and cloud forests constitute an otherworldly world for gorillas, elephants, lions and chimps — a rare mix.Continue reading the main story

Beyond that, Virunga’s Lake Edward, where the oil is believed to lie, is part of the headwaters of the Nile. While SOCO has said it will not proceed without Unesco and Congolese approval, an oil spill here could contaminate water that tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, rely on.“Any toxins from here could flow up to the Mediterranean,” said Emmanuel de Merode, Virunga’s director. “It could reach all the way to Spain.”Mr. de Merode has made countless enemies over the years. He routinely confronts rebels, poachers and various other outlaws who skulk through Virunga, which lies on the border of Rwanda and Uganda, in the eye of several recent wars.In April, he was driving back from the Congolese city of Goma, where he had just delivered a confidential report to state prosecutors about suspicions of illegal oil activities in Virunga. A group of men in fatigues popped out of the bushes and raised their rifles.“You ever been shot?” Mr. de Merode said, recounting the ambush. “It’s like getting winded. But it doesn’t knock you down, like in the movies.”He said he dived into the bushes with his gun and fired wildly back.The shooters, who have yet to be identified but are suspected of being rogue government soldiers, vanished. Mr. de Merode staggered into the road. He had been hit in the stomach and the chest. Several aid agency cars whooshed past, reluctant to pick up a man with blood splattered all over him.He waved down two motorcyclists, who sped to an army checkpoint and hustled him into a truck. But as his life was slipping away, the army truck ran out of gas.“I had to reach into my pocket and give them 20 bucks” in bloodied bills, Mr. de Merode said.The truck then broke down and could not be restarted, and Mr. de Merode needed two more rides before barely making it to a hospital.The House of Merode is a family of Belgian nobility. Mr. de Merode, 44, was born a prince, and his two young daughters, who live in Kenya, are princesses. He spends most of his time in Congo, in a mountainside tent, getting paid $800 a month by the Congolese government.“I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” he said, “just a little bit more.”It may take a lot more. Environmentalists have seen how malleable the boundaries of protected areas can be.Photo

Water being fetched from Lake Edward in Virunga National Park. If oil is found beneath the lake, the park map may be redrawn.

Credit

Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

The Selous Game Reserve, also a Unesco World Heritage Site, in neighboring Tanzania, is one of the largest protected areas left in Africa. It is also where large quantities of uranium were discovered.In 2012, the Tanzanian government persuaded the World Heritage Committee, the international body that designates World Heritage Sites, to modify the Selous’s boundaries so that the uranium area would lie just outside the site and mining could begin. Several observers at the meetings said some committee members had environmental concerns, but ultimately did not want to appear as if they were trying to keep Africans poor — or valuing animals over humans.Many predict something similar in store for Virunga.Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

Officially, the Congolese government has stayed mum. Many observers say President Joseph Kabila is waiting to see how much oil is actually in Virunga. If there are billions of barrels, as in neighboring Uganda, they suspect the Congolese government will redraw Virunga’s boundaries or possibly rename it as a new park — minus Lake Edward.Continue reading the main story

“This is the battle not only for the oldest national park in Africa, it’s also the battle for maintaining the World Heritage Convention,” said Guy Debonnet, who has worked for the Unesco World Heritage Center. “If Virunga goes, many others will follow.”Congo has a long history of spectacular riches creating spectacular misery, going back more than 100 years when the Belgians brutalized the country for rubber, ivory, copper and other minerals. More recently, Ugandan and Rwandan militias killed thousands to plunder coltan and gold.Now residents around Virunga worry that oil could set off a new conflict.Paluku Mukosa Minos, a fisherman, said government soldiers had recently beaten to death two of his friends for opposing oil exploration. Mr. Minos and other fishermen spoke of “askari wa SOCO” — SOCO’s soldiers — and a Congolese Army officer described corrupt elements within the ranks.“Certain soldiers are taking money from SOCO,” Capt. J. B. Bukasa said, adding that such allegations were well known. “That’s the problem. Everything is money, and SOCO has so much money.”In the new documentary “Virunga,” hidden camera footage reveals what appears to be a Congolese Army officer trying to bribe one of Virunga’s wardens.In another scene, the Congolese officer introduces the warden to someone identified as a SOCO security adviser, who hands the warden an envelope “just to say thank you.”The same warden, Rodrigue Mugaruka Katembo, said in a recent interview that he later tried to stop workers from erecting an antenna commissioned by SOCO in the park. He said he was kidnapped by Congolese soldiers who burned cigarettes on his scalp, which was documented in a Human Rights Watch report.“They said I was the enemy,” Mr. Katembo said.SOCO denied a role in any violence. Its lawyers criticized the film as “one-sided, inaccurate and misrepresentative,” saying that the hidden camera scenes did not “in any way substantiate” the bribery allegations.In June, SOCO signed a joint declaration with the World Wildlife Fund, saying it would not drill in Virunga “unless Unesco and the D.R.C. government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its World Heritage status.” SOCO has also said it would not harm buffer zones adjacent to World Heritage Sites.Mr. de Merode and those who worked with him on the Virunga documentary were furious that the World Wildlife Fund agreed to the declaration.“We had a massive support base, and overnight that support base was wiped out,” said Joanna Natasegara, the film’s producer. “The declaration said Virunga was safe, SOCO was gone, and everyone could move on to the next fight.”World Wildlife Fund executives now acknowledge that the battle over Virunga is hardly over. SOCO has yet to relinquish its operating permits or commit to an unconditional withdrawal.“They’re leaving the door open,” said Zach Abraham, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s global campaigns.Still, he said, “there are so many losing fights around the planet, if we don’t take a moment to celebrate achievements, we lose an important opportunity.”“You need to remind the audience these fights are worth fighting,” Mr. Abraham said. “Virunga is one of the most incredibly beautiful places you will ever see in your entire life.”

Human mode of responding to HIV vaccine is conserved from monkeys

The antibody response from an HIV vaccine trial in Thailand was made possible by a genetic trait carried over in humans from an ancient ancestry with monkeys and apes, according to a study led by Duke Medicine researchers.

In a study published in the journal Immunity, the researchers report that an investigational vaccine that elicited an immune response in an estimated 31 percent of participants was able to do so because of a particular antibody gene motif that is shared with rhesus macaques and other primates.

When activated by the vaccine, the antibody gene makes it easy for the immune system to recognize and attack the HIV virus at a specific location on the outer coat of the virus.

The finding helps further the understanding of how the vaccine candidate, tested in Thailand in a trial known as RV144, triggered an immune response that provided modest protection. The RV144 study is the only vaccine trial to show any efficacy, so it provides data for scientists to mine. Duke researchers have played a key role in an international collaboration that has discovered many important clues into why RV144 worked and what it will take to develop a more efficacious HIV vaccine.

In their analysis, the researchers tracked the immune response in rhesus macaques that were immunized with a vaccine regimen similar to that used in the RV144 human trial in Thailand. The researchers found that the monkeys’ immune response was similar to what was seen in humans, and was actually the dominant response.

“It turns out that this antibody response that can recognize this part of the HIV envelope is encoded in the genes present throughout primate development,” said lead author Kevin Wiehe, Ph.D. “We found it in almost every primate species we studied — macaques, gorillas, bonobos and lemurs.

“When we found it in that many primate species, we then traced it back to when the common ancestor of humans and lemurs diverged — 87 million years ago. HIV has not been around that long, but other monkey retroviruses likely have, so this is an ancient antibody recognition motif that has been retained through evolution that is also used to recognize HIV.”

Wiehe and colleagues said the ancient genetic trait enables primates to produce antibodies easily to retrovirus proteins, and presents an opportunity to seek ways of boosting this ability or building upon it to create an effective vaccine.

The drawback, however, is that this specific response might compete with broadly neutralizing antibodies that can defuse the virus regardless of how it mutates.

“The place on the envelope to which antibodies were made in the RV144 trial is also a site of rare broadly neutralizing antibody binding,” said senior author Barton F. Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute. “What we have found is that the mode of making the non-broadly neutralizing antibodies is so dominant, that it is conserved throughout primate development over millions of years.

“Thus, our primate immune systems have been trained over many years to respond in this manner,” Haynes said. “To make broadly neutralizing antibodies, we need to bypass this remarkably highly conserved mode of antibody response to train our immune systems to respond in a new manner. That is where our current studies are focused.”

Wiehe said eliciting broadly neutralizing antibodies remains one key goal of HIV vaccine development, because the HIV virus mutates so rapidly.

“We need antibodies that can recognize multiple strains of the virus,” he said.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Duke Medicine. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — The trouble started when a British company suddenly appeared in this iconic and spectacularly beautiful national park, prospecting for oil.Villagers who opposed the project were beaten by government soldiers. A park warden, who tried to block the oil company, SOCO International, from building a cellphone tower in the park, was kidnapped and tortured. Virunga’s director, a Belgian prince, was shot and nearly killed hours after he delivered a secret report on the oil company’s activities.Much like the fight over drilling on federal lands in the United States, the struggle over oil exploration in Africa’s national parks is a classic quandary, pitting economic development against environmental preservation.But out here, the quest for oil seems to be more volatile, and the stakes are arguably higher — on both sides.While West Africa has been a major hydrocarbon producer for decades, new technology like deeper drilling has led to a bonanza of new energy discoveries here on the continent’s east side.Oil companies are now circling several African parks like this one, home to critically endangered wildlife, such as colossal silverback mountain gorillas, among the last of their kind.But development is far more than just a buzzword here. The people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, northern Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique — all places of recent hydrocarbon finds — are among the poorest in the world, many without electricity or clean water, their children often facing relentless illness and few prospects.African governments say they have a moral obligation to pursue anything that might lift their countries out of grinding poverty, including drilling for oil in pristine natural environments.With an unprecedented surge of oil activity in this region, environmentalists vowed to “draw the line” here in Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park and a Unesco World Heritage Site, protected for its “outstanding universal value” to all humankind. The World Wildlife Fund swung into action, signing up hundreds of thousands of supporters in a global campaign.Continue reading the main story

Conflicts Over Africa’s Wilderness

The hunt for resources is putting pressure on pristine wilderness areas in Eastern and Central Africa, including Virunga National Park, the continent’s oldest national park.

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Murchison Falls National Park

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In June, it made a triumphant announcement: “Major Conservation Win: Oil Company Backs Off Oil Exploration in Africa’s Oldest National Park.” It looked like a happy ending for the gorillas and the trees.There’s just one problem: It might not be true.In a private letter sent the same day the environmentalists were savoring their victory, SOCO International reassured the Congolese government that it was continuing to evaluate seismic data so that “the D.R.C. government can take all appropriate measures to pursue, or not, such exploration.”A few days later, the company’s chairman, Rui de Sousa, said at SOCO’s annual general meeting, “We have not pulled out.”Virunga’s champions say that if they lose the battle here, it will open the floodgates to drilling in protected spaces across the continent.The park is considered one of the most biodiverse slices of the planet. Its savannas of yellow grass, towering volcanoes bubbling with lava, jungles, swamps and cloud forests constitute an otherworldly world for gorillas, elephants, lions and chimps — a rare mix.Continue reading the main story

Beyond that, Virunga’s Lake Edward, where the oil is believed to lie, is part of the headwaters of the Nile. While SOCO has said it will not proceed without Unesco and Congolese approval, an oil spill here could contaminate water that tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, rely on.“Any toxins from here could flow up to the Mediterranean,” said Emmanuel de Merode, Virunga’s director. “It could reach all the way to Spain.”Mr. de Merode has made countless enemies over the years. He routinely confronts rebels, poachers and various other outlaws who skulk through Virunga, which lies on the border of Rwanda and Uganda, in the eye of several recent wars.In April, he was driving back from the Congolese city of Goma, where he had just delivered a confidential report to state prosecutors about suspicions of illegal oil activities in Virunga. A group of men in fatigues popped out of the bushes and raised their rifles.“You ever been shot?” Mr. de Merode said, recounting the ambush. “It’s like getting winded. But it doesn’t knock you down, like in the movies.”He said he dived into the bushes with his gun and fired wildly back.The shooters, who have yet to be identified but are suspected of being rogue government soldiers, vanished. Mr. de Merode staggered into the road. He had been hit in the stomach and the chest. Several aid agency cars whooshed past, reluctant to pick up a man with blood splattered all over him.He waved down two motorcyclists, who sped to an army checkpoint and hustled him into a truck. But as his life was slipping away, the army truck ran out of gas.“I had to reach into my pocket and give them 20 bucks” in bloodied bills, Mr. de Merode said.The truck then broke down and could not be restarted, and Mr. de Merode needed two more rides before barely making it to a hospital.The House of Merode is a family of Belgian nobility. Mr. de Merode, 44, was born a prince, and his two young daughters, who live in Kenya, are princesses. He spends most of his time in Congo, in a mountainside tent, getting paid $800 a month by the Congolese government.“I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” he said, “just a little bit more.”It may take a lot more. Environmentalists have seen how malleable the boundaries of protected areas can be.Photo

Water being fetched from Lake Edward in Virunga National Park. If oil is found beneath the lake, the park map may be redrawn.

Credit

Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

The Selous Game Reserve, also a Unesco World Heritage Site, in neighboring Tanzania, is one of the largest protected areas left in Africa. It is also where large quantities of uranium were discovered.In 2012, the Tanzanian government persuaded the World Heritage Committee, the international body that designates World Heritage Sites, to modify the Selous’s boundaries so that the uranium area would lie just outside the site and mining could begin. Several observers at the meetings said some committee members had environmental concerns, but ultimately did not want to appear as if they were trying to keep Africans poor — or valuing animals over humans.Many predict something similar in store for Virunga.Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

Officially, the Congolese government has stayed mum. Many observers say President Joseph Kabila is waiting to see how much oil is actually in Virunga. If there are billions of barrels, as in neighboring Uganda, they suspect the Congolese government will redraw Virunga’s boundaries or possibly rename it as a new park — minus Lake Edward.Continue reading the main story

“This is the battle not only for the oldest national park in Africa, it’s also the battle for maintaining the World Heritage Convention,” said Guy Debonnet, who has worked for the Unesco World Heritage Center. “If Virunga goes, many others will follow.”Congo has a long history of spectacular riches creating spectacular misery, going back more than 100 years when the Belgians brutalized the country for rubber, ivory, copper and other minerals. More recently, Ugandan and Rwandan militias killed thousands to plunder coltan and gold.Now residents around Virunga worry that oil could set off a new conflict.Paluku Mukosa Minos, a fisherman, said government soldiers had recently beaten to death two of his friends for opposing oil exploration. Mr. Minos and other fishermen spoke of “askari wa SOCO” — SOCO’s soldiers — and a Congolese Army officer described corrupt elements within the ranks.“Certain soldiers are taking money from SOCO,” Capt. J. B. Bukasa said, adding that such allegations were well known. “That’s the problem. Everything is money, and SOCO has so much money.”In the new documentary “Virunga,” hidden camera footage reveals what appears to be a Congolese Army officer trying to bribe one of Virunga’s wardens.In another scene, the Congolese officer introduces the warden to someone identified as a SOCO security adviser, who hands the warden an envelope “just to say thank you.”The same warden, Rodrigue Mugaruka Katembo, said in a recent interview that he later tried to stop workers from erecting an antenna commissioned by SOCO in the park. He said he was kidnapped by Congolese soldiers who burned cigarettes on his scalp, which was documented in a Human Rights Watch report.“They said I was the enemy,” Mr. Katembo said.SOCO denied a role in any violence. Its lawyers criticized the film as “one-sided, inaccurate and misrepresentative,” saying that the hidden camera scenes did not “in any way substantiate” the bribery allegations.In June, SOCO signed a joint declaration with the World Wildlife Fund, saying it would not drill in Virunga “unless Unesco and the D.R.C. government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its World Heritage status.” SOCO has also said it would not harm buffer zones adjacent to World Heritage Sites.Mr. de Merode and those who worked with him on the Virunga documentary were furious that the World Wildlife Fund agreed to the declaration.“We had a massive support base, and overnight that support base was wiped out,” said Joanna Natasegara, the film’s producer. “The declaration said Virunga was safe, SOCO was gone, and everyone could move on to the next fight.”World Wildlife Fund executives now acknowledge that the battle over Virunga is hardly over. SOCO has yet to relinquish its operating permits or commit to an unconditional withdrawal.“They’re leaving the door open,” said Zach Abraham, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s global campaigns.Still, he said, “there are so many losing fights around the planet, if we don’t take a moment to celebrate achievements, we lose an important opportunity.”“You need to remind the audience these fights are worth fighting,” Mr. Abraham said. “Virunga is one of the most incredibly beautiful places you will ever see in your entire life.”

Endangered monkeys in the Amazon are more diverse than previously thought, study finds

Research by UCLA life scientists and 50 colleagues sheds new light on the biological differences among more than 150 species of monkeys in South America, many of which are endangered. Their findings could be particularly important in shaping efforts to conserve the biodiversity of primates in South America.

The scientists have resolved a dispute over whether a small population of black-headed squirrel monkeys (Saimiri vanzolinii), which are found only in an isolated part of Brazil, is a sub-species of another species or its own species.

“We found strong evidence that it’s a distinct, separate species,” said co-author Jessica Lynch Alfaro, an adjunct assistant professor in the department of anthropology in the UCLA College and a member of UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics. “It’s its own unique group.”

The scientists, who hail from the U.S. and six other countries, used genetic and statistical analysis to find that this group of monkeys split from its sister group, called Saimiri ustus, about 500,000 years ago, and from a group called Saimiri boliviensis approximately 1.3 million years ago. Researchers previously had thought that Saimiri boliviensis and Saimiri vanzolinii were the same species.

The understanding that Saimiri vanzolinii is its own distinct group is particularly significant because the monkeys’ survival is being threatened by climate change.

“They may lose all of their habitat,” Lynch Alfaro said. “This species has the smallest, most restricted habitat of any Amazonian primate, and it has been predicted that the habitat may be drastically altered due to changes in weather patterns as a result of global warming.”

The monkeys live in a flooded forest in Mamirauá, an extremely isolated part of the Amazon. The area has a predictable seasonal cycle, where the water rises and descends, with average changes of about 35 feet during the course of the year. However, if the rain patterns there shift as climatologists predict, torrential rains and longer-lasting floods could dramatically change the habitat, making it unsuitable for this and other monkey species.

The research was a collaboration among Lynch Alfaro; Michael Alfaro, a UCLA associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology; and an international team of primatologists. The results are published in 14 papers in a special January issue of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution; Alfaro and Lynch Alfaro are senior authors of four of the studies.

“This collection of papers is a major step toward understanding the evolutionary history and biogeographic history that have given rise to the species that we see in South American today, and it will play a key role in identifying conservation priorities for species,” Alfaro said.

One study led by Janet Buckner, a graduate student in Alfaro’s laboratory, solves a long-standing mystery in the evolution of small-bodied tamarin monkeys, which spread throughout the Western Amazon basin in an area larger than California and Texas combined.

Buckner used genetic and statistical analyses to show how these monkeys–part of a group known as marmosets and tamarins–spread across South America. She and colleagues found that small-bodied tamarins and large-bodied tamarins separated geographically and genetically some 9 million years ago, then evolved on their own before coming back into contact with each other approximately 5 million years later. They are much more distinct than scientists realized, she found.

“They are unique and genetically distinct,” Lynch Alfaro said. “Humans are more closely related to chimpanzees than small tamarins are to large tamarins.”

Alfaro said that today’s small tamarins have acquired unique features as a result of 9 million years of unique evolutionary history. To find food, for example, large tamarins stalk and pounce on easily observed insects; small tamarins seek out insects under bark and in tree holes, he said.

The scientists are calling the small-bodied tamarins Leontocebus and reporting that they are a rather diverse group, with significant color variations ranging from white to brown.

Primates have been relatively safe in the Amazon basin, but climate change and the construction of large hydro-electric dams and the rise of enormous soy plantations in the area are taking a toll on primates. About half of the species of monkeys in South America are threatened, said Lynch Alfaro, who has conducted field work in the Amazon and other habitats in South America for 19 years.

The new research has enabled scientists to test the ideas of Alfred Russel Wallace, an early 20th century anthropologist whose life and work are being celebrated at UCLA throughout the academic year. “We’re following in his footsteps,” Alfaro said. “He’s overshadowed by Darwin, but if there were no Darwin, everyone would be talking about Wallace.”

For example, Wallace observed that primates on different sides of large rivers look significantly different and he hypothesized that major rivers that feed the Amazon serve as boundaries that cause diversity.

To test that hypothesis, Alfaro, Lynch Alfaro and colleagues collected and tested tissue samples from monkeys living on both sides of Brazil’s Rio Negro and Rio Branco (which feeds the Rio Negro).

They found that the monkeys were there before the formation of the Rio Negro, which then separated the monkeys from each other and led to the diversification of their features, Lynch Alfaro said.

“They’re distinctly different because the river isolated them on either side when it formed,” she said.

The Rio Branco, meanwhile, served as a stopping point for six different kinds of monkeys, limiting the distribution of uakari monkeys, titi monkeys and gracile capuchin monkeys to the west, and saki monkeys, large tamarins and robust capuchins to the east — and confirming Wallace’s hypothesis.

Long-acting drug effectively prevents HIV-like infection in monkeys

A regime of anti-HIV drugs — components of regimens to treat established HIV infection — has the potential to protect against infection in the first place. But real life can interfere; the effectiveness of this prophylactic approach declines if the medications aren’t taken as prescribed.

HIV researchers hope a new compound, known as cabotegravir, could make dosing easier for some because the drug would be administered by injection once every three months. A clinical trial testing long-acting cabotegravir’s safety and acceptability has already begun at multiple U.S. sites including The Rockefeller University Hospital. Meanwhile two new studies, including one conducted by researchers at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) and Rockefeller University, published today (January 15) in Science Translational Medicine, show that long-acting cabotegravir injections are highly protective in a monkey model of vaginal transmission of a virus similar to HIV.

“Clinical trial results have demonstrated that the effectiveness of preventive oral medications can range with results as high as 75 percent effective to as low as ineffective, and a lot of that variability appears to hinge on the patient’s ability to take the pills as prescribed,” says study researcher Martin Markowitz, a professor at Rockefeller University and ADARC. “Long acting cabotegravir has the potential to create an option that could improve adherence by making it possible to receive the drug by injection once every three months.”

Developed by ViiV Healthcare and GlaxoSmithKline, and previously known as GSK744 LA, cabotegravir is an antiretroviral drug. Antiretrovirals interfere with HIV’s ability to replicate itself using a host cell and they are used to treat an HIV infection or to prevent those at high risk from acquiring it in the first place.

Cabotegravir belongs to a group of antiretrovirals that target integrase, an enzyme the virus uses to integrate itself into the cell’s genome. This compound is a relative of an already FDA-approved integrase inhibitor, dolutegravir, but with chemical properties that allow it to be formulated into a long-acting suspension for injection.

A previous study by the ADARC and Rockefeller team in collaboration with ViiV Healthcare and GSK found long-acting cabotegravir could protect male rhesus macaque monkeys from exposure to a virus related to HIV. Following up on these results, a phase 2 clinical trial is now underway in a group of 120 men at low risk of infection. Before cabotegravir’s effectiveness in high risk individuals can be tested, trials must show that study participants tolerate the drug well and find the quarterly injections, which are a novel approach to HIV prevention, acceptable.

Both new animal studies were conducted with women in mind; in 2013 women accounted for 47 percent of new HIV infections worldwide according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS. Working separately, two teams tested the drug’s ability to block vaginal transmission in two species of monkeys with different breeding cycles and susceptibility to infection.

First author Chasity Andrews, a postdoctoral fellow at ADARC and Rockefeller, and colleagues at ADARC, the Tulane Regional Primate Center and ViiV/GSK, studied female rhesus macaques treated with progesterone to increase their susceptibility to the virus. They found injections of long acting cabotegravir were 90 percent effective at protecting the monkeys from repeated high-dose exposures to the virus.

Meanwhile, the complementary study conducted by researchers at the CDC and ViiV/GSK found female pigtail macaques injected with cabotegravir were completely protected against multiple exposures to the virus.

“While we are still a long way off from showing that this drug works for HIV prevention in humans, our hope is that it may one day offer high risk women, as well as men, an additional option for HIV prevention,” Markowitz says. “One of the lessons we have learned from contraception is the more options available, the better. We are hoping for the same in HIV prevention — more options and better results.”

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Rockefeller University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

ALBANY — Apes aren’t us.In a blow for animal lovers and simian-rights advocates, a five-member state judicial panel unanimously ruled on Thursday that a chimpanzee could not be considered a “legal person” and thus sue for his freedom.The unusual decision came in response to an unusual legal action brought on behalf of Tommy, an adult chimp who currently lives in a cage in Gloversville, about 50 miles northwest of Albany.Supporters of the animal, led by the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal-rights group based in Florida, had argued that Tommy was being held against his will and — as an “autonomous, self-determining being” — had a right to a common-law writ of habeas corpus, a legal means for addressing the unlawful detention of prisoners.On Thursday, however, Justice Karen K. Peters of the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, writing for the five-judge panel, said that apes’ lackadaisical approach to civic life meant they did not deserve many of the rights afforded most people reading this article.

Continue reading the main story

Video

Animals Are Persons Too

This short documentary follows the lawyer Steven Wise’s effort to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.

“Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” wrote Justice Peters, the presiding justice for the Third Judicial Department. “In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights” such as habeas corpus.Tommy’s first request for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in Fulton County in December 2013 and quickly denied by a lower court.Natalie K. Prosin, executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said the group planned to appeal the latest ruling to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. She said the case’s odd nature should not be cause for its dismissal.“That habeas corpus has never been demanded before on behalf of a chimpanzee is not a reason for denying it now,” she said via email, adding that common law should “change in light of new scientific discoveries, changing experiences and changing ideas of what is right or wrong.”Neither Tommy nor his owners, Patrick C. and Diane Lavery, of Gloversville, attended oral arguments in October. On Thursday, Mr. Lavery said that he was not surprised that the judges had sided with him, and emphasized that Tommy was well cared for, with toys in his cage, outdoor access and cable TV. “He’s always got something going on,” he said.The issue of legal protections for other species has been gaining momentum. In New York, Ms. Prosin’s group is pursuing two other cases seeking the release of chimpanzees, who share nearly all the same DNA as humans but few of the perks.Justice Peters wrote that while the judges had been presented evidence that chimps “exhibit highly complex cognitive functions,” the animals’ lack of responsibilities left them less than human under the law.“Legal personhood,” she wrote, “has consistently been defined in terms of both rights and duties.”

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo — The trouble started when a British company suddenly appeared in this iconic and spectacularly beautiful national park, prospecting for oil.Villagers who opposed the project were beaten by government soldiers. A park warden, who tried to block the oil company, SOCO International, from building a cellphone tower in the park, was kidnapped and tortured. Virunga’s director, a Belgian prince, was shot and nearly killed hours after he delivered a secret report on the oil company’s activities.Much like the fight over drilling on federal lands in the United States, the struggle over oil exploration in Africa’s national parks is a classic quandary, pitting economic development against environmental preservation.But out here, the quest for oil seems to be more volatile, and the stakes are arguably higher — on both sides.While West Africa has been a major hydrocarbon producer for decades, new technology like deeper drilling has led to a bonanza of new energy discoveries here on the continent’s east side.Oil companies are now circling several African parks like this one, home to critically endangered wildlife, such as colossal silverback mountain gorillas, among the last of their kind.But development is far more than just a buzzword here. The people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, northern Kenya, Uganda and Mozambique — all places of recent hydrocarbon finds — are among the poorest in the world, many without electricity or clean water, their children often facing relentless illness and few prospects.African governments say they have a moral obligation to pursue anything that might lift their countries out of grinding poverty, including drilling for oil in pristine natural environments.With an unprecedented surge of oil activity in this region, environmentalists vowed to “draw the line” here in Virunga, Africa’s oldest national park and a Unesco World Heritage Site, protected for its “outstanding universal value” to all humankind. The World Wildlife Fund swung into action, signing up hundreds of thousands of supporters in a global campaign.Continue reading the main story

Conflicts Over Africa’s Wilderness

The hunt for resources is putting pressure on pristine wilderness areas in Eastern and Central Africa, including Virunga National Park, the continent’s oldest national park.

DEMOCRATIC

REPUBLIC

OF CONGO

Murchison Falls National Park

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REPUBLIC

OF CONGO

Continue reading the main story

In June, it made a triumphant announcement: “Major Conservation Win: Oil Company Backs Off Oil Exploration in Africa’s Oldest National Park.” It looked like a happy ending for the gorillas and the trees.There’s just one problem: It might not be true.In a private letter sent the same day the environmentalists were savoring their victory, SOCO International reassured the Congolese government that it was continuing to evaluate seismic data so that “the D.R.C. government can take all appropriate measures to pursue, or not, such exploration.”A few days later, the company’s chairman, Rui de Sousa, said at SOCO’s annual general meeting, “We have not pulled out.”Virunga’s champions say that if they lose the battle here, it will open the floodgates to drilling in protected spaces across the continent.The park is considered one of the most biodiverse slices of the planet. Its savannas of yellow grass, towering volcanoes bubbling with lava, jungles, swamps and cloud forests constitute an otherworldly world for gorillas, elephants, lions and chimps — a rare mix.Continue reading the main story

Beyond that, Virunga’s Lake Edward, where the oil is believed to lie, is part of the headwaters of the Nile. While SOCO has said it will not proceed without Unesco and Congolese approval, an oil spill here could contaminate water that tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, rely on.“Any toxins from here could flow up to the Mediterranean,” said Emmanuel de Merode, Virunga’s director. “It could reach all the way to Spain.”Mr. de Merode has made countless enemies over the years. He routinely confronts rebels, poachers and various other outlaws who skulk through Virunga, which lies on the border of Rwanda and Uganda, in the eye of several recent wars.In April, he was driving back from the Congolese city of Goma, where he had just delivered a confidential report to state prosecutors about suspicions of illegal oil activities in Virunga. A group of men in fatigues popped out of the bushes and raised their rifles.“You ever been shot?” Mr. de Merode said, recounting the ambush. “It’s like getting winded. But it doesn’t knock you down, like in the movies.”He said he dived into the bushes with his gun and fired wildly back.The shooters, who have yet to be identified but are suspected of being rogue government soldiers, vanished. Mr. de Merode staggered into the road. He had been hit in the stomach and the chest. Several aid agency cars whooshed past, reluctant to pick up a man with blood splattered all over him.He waved down two motorcyclists, who sped to an army checkpoint and hustled him into a truck. But as his life was slipping away, the army truck ran out of gas.“I had to reach into my pocket and give them 20 bucks” in bloodied bills, Mr. de Merode said.The truck then broke down and could not be restarted, and Mr. de Merode needed two more rides before barely making it to a hospital.The House of Merode is a family of Belgian nobility. Mr. de Merode, 44, was born a prince, and his two young daughters, who live in Kenya, are princesses. He spends most of his time in Congo, in a mountainside tent, getting paid $800 a month by the Congolese government.“I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing,” he said, “just a little bit more.”It may take a lot more. Environmentalists have seen how malleable the boundaries of protected areas can be.Photo

Water being fetched from Lake Edward in Virunga National Park. If oil is found beneath the lake, the park map may be redrawn.

Credit

Uriel Sinai for The New York Times

The Selous Game Reserve, also a Unesco World Heritage Site, in neighboring Tanzania, is one of the largest protected areas left in Africa. It is also where large quantities of uranium were discovered.In 2012, the Tanzanian government persuaded the World Heritage Committee, the international body that designates World Heritage Sites, to modify the Selous’s boundaries so that the uranium area would lie just outside the site and mining could begin. Several observers at the meetings said some committee members had environmental concerns, but ultimately did not want to appear as if they were trying to keep Africans poor — or valuing animals over humans.Many predict something similar in store for Virunga.Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

Officially, the Congolese government has stayed mum. Many observers say President Joseph Kabila is waiting to see how much oil is actually in Virunga. If there are billions of barrels, as in neighboring Uganda, they suspect the Congolese government will redraw Virunga’s boundaries or possibly rename it as a new park — minus Lake Edward.Continue reading the main story

“This is the battle not only for the oldest national park in Africa, it’s also the battle for maintaining the World Heritage Convention,” said Guy Debonnet, who has worked for the Unesco World Heritage Center. “If Virunga goes, many others will follow.”Congo has a long history of spectacular riches creating spectacular misery, going back more than 100 years when the Belgians brutalized the country for rubber, ivory, copper and other minerals. More recently, Ugandan and Rwandan militias killed thousands to plunder coltan and gold.Now residents around Virunga worry that oil could set off a new conflict.Paluku Mukosa Minos, a fisherman, said government soldiers had recently beaten to death two of his friends for opposing oil exploration. Mr. Minos and other fishermen spoke of “askari wa SOCO” — SOCO’s soldiers — and a Congolese Army officer described corrupt elements within the ranks.“Certain soldiers are taking money from SOCO,” Capt. J. B. Bukasa said, adding that such allegations were well known. “That’s the problem. Everything is money, and SOCO has so much money.”In the new documentary “Virunga,” hidden camera footage reveals what appears to be a Congolese Army officer trying to bribe one of Virunga’s wardens.In another scene, the Congolese officer introduces the warden to someone identified as a SOCO security adviser, who hands the warden an envelope “just to say thank you.”The same warden, Rodrigue Mugaruka Katembo, said in a recent interview that he later tried to stop workers from erecting an antenna commissioned by SOCO in the park. He said he was kidnapped by Congolese soldiers who burned cigarettes on his scalp, which was documented in a Human Rights Watch report.“They said I was the enemy,” Mr. Katembo said.SOCO denied a role in any violence. Its lawyers criticized the film as “one-sided, inaccurate and misrepresentative,” saying that the hidden camera scenes did not “in any way substantiate” the bribery allegations.In June, SOCO signed a joint declaration with the World Wildlife Fund, saying it would not drill in Virunga “unless Unesco and the D.R.C. government agree that such activities are not incompatible with its World Heritage status.” SOCO has also said it would not harm buffer zones adjacent to World Heritage Sites.Mr. de Merode and those who worked with him on the Virunga documentary were furious that the World Wildlife Fund agreed to the declaration.“We had a massive support base, and overnight that support base was wiped out,” said Joanna Natasegara, the film’s producer. “The declaration said Virunga was safe, SOCO was gone, and everyone could move on to the next fight.”World Wildlife Fund executives now acknowledge that the battle over Virunga is hardly over. SOCO has yet to relinquish its operating permits or commit to an unconditional withdrawal.“They’re leaving the door open,” said Zach Abraham, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s global campaigns.Still, he said, “there are so many losing fights around the planet, if we don’t take a moment to celebrate achievements, we lose an important opportunity.”“You need to remind the audience these fights are worth fighting,” Mr. Abraham said. “Virunga is one of the most incredibly beautiful places you will ever see in your entire life.”

New strains of parasites identified: Research on whipworms has implications for human health and animal conservation

About 600 million people around the world live with whipworms. Most are children in the developing world, whose physical and mental development is stunted by these gastrointestinal parasites. The whipworms affect their ability to learn and therefore have a long-term impact on the social and economic situations of some of the world’s poorest people. Although the whipworm species Trichuris trichiura is known to inhabit both non-human primates and humans, little is known about the parasite. Indeed, until a recent study by Ria Ghai, a doctoral student in biology at McGill, it was widely assumed that a single species was capable of infecting both primates and humans. But Ghai has discovered that there are three genetically distinct groups of whipworms — and only one of the three appears to be transmissible between humans and non-human primates. It is important information for public health officers around the world.

Ghai’s research, published recently in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, was done in the rainforest of Kibale National Park in southwestern Uganda, which has one of the largest concentrations of primates in the world. The trees are alive with monkeys, and include endangered species such as the red colobus monkey, the eastern chimpanzee, and the rare l’hoest’s monkey as well as more common species, like baboons. In all, there are 13 different species of primates within the park. But the park is an island of forest within one of the most densely populated agricultural regions in East Africa, with a population of 300-600 people per square km. And there is increasing human pressure on limited land and growing interaction between the two groups.

“The park has been a protected space since 1993, but for a very long time people have been going into the forest to gather wood to burn and banana leaves and grasses to weave with, as well as to hunt bush meat, and it’s hard to change habits when people are in such need,” says Ghai. “The monkeys also come out of the park to raid the fields for maize and sweet potatoes. So in a place where there is little running water to wash either food or hands and where people walk barefoot wherever they go, it is not surprising that there is an exchange of fecal matter between humans and primates that has led to the transmission of whipworms.”

Although researchers and medical people have known about whipworms for a long time, people have paid little attention to the transmission of the parasite between primates and humans until now. Ria Ghai’s molecular analysis of the fecal matter from various species, including humans, suggests that there is one strain of whipworms t found only in humans, another strain which is only found in either black-and-white or red colobus monkeys, and a final strain found in both humans and primates.

“What this shows us is that we have been underestimating biodiversity,” says co-author Prof. Colin Chapman, from McGill’s Department of Anthropology and School of the Environment who has been working in the area for many years. “There are far more species of parasites around than we had expected, and we hope this new information will be useful both for conservationists and for people working in health policy.”

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

Facial motion activates a dedicated network within the brain

A face is more than a static collection of features. A shift in gaze, a tightening of the lips, a tilt of the head, these movements convey important clues to someone’s state of mind. Scientists know that two particularly social and visual creatures, humans and rhesus macaque monkeys, have a network of small areas within their brains that become active when shown still images of faces. But it hasn’t been clear if the same areas are responsible for processing changing expressions and other facial movements.

New research by Clark Fisher, a graduate student in Assistant Professor Winrich Freiwald’s Laboratory of Neural Systems at The Rockefeller University confirms that they are. Fisher and Freiwald, building on earlier work by graduate student Pablo Polosecki, found that these face-processing areas, which they call patches, within a macaque’s brain appear to respond selectively to the motion of faces, while reacting much less to other types of motion.

“Based on input from the eyes, the brain’s visual system reconstructs reality, a process that starts out with attributes, such as form, motion and color, that the brain then integrates to build meaningful representations of the world,” Freiwald says. “This work reveals how the macaque face processing system reunites two individual streams of visual information — face form and face motion — as it recreates the social reality of a face as a macaque sees it.”

Freiwald has been studying brain patches linked to facial recognition for over a decade, and was a contributor to a recent report by the National Research Council that evaluated the science behind eyewitness identification. In previous work with his colleague Doris Tsao, now at the California Institute of Technology, he found that a network of interconnected brain patches found along a deep groove in the sides of the macaque brain form a specialized system for processing faces, just as had been shown in an analogous part of the human brain.

While the system for processing still faces appears similar between humans and macaques, studies of facial motion turned up inconsistent results between the species. Human research said, yes, face patches respond specifically to facial motion, with one patch even reacting more strongly to moving faces than to still ones. However, work with macaques suggested, no, this area of the brain seems to respond to facial motion just because it is motion, not because faces are involved. Given that humans and macaques are close relatives in evolutionary terms, this discrepancy perplexed Freiwald and Fisher.

Brain anatomy makes this puzzle difficult to solve because the patches of interest are located in a part of the macaque brain, the superior temporal sulcus, that also contains areas that respond to motion in general. This creates a challenge for researchers trying to interpret what is going on in this part of a macaque brain when it sees a moving face.

To tease out the distinction between a response to general motion and one specific to faces, Fisher used high resolution scans, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, to record changes in blood flow in and around the superior temporal sulcus.

He showed the macaques a variety of movies of fellow macaques making expressions — aggressively baring their impressive canine teeth, pleasantly smacking their lips, and making faces as recognizable to macaques as a smile and a grimace would be to a human. All the while, the macaque’s head moves, as if turning to address others around it. The researchers made these movies themselves by filming macaques in front of a blue screen. For comparison, Fisher also showed the macaques images of static faces, as well as moving and static objects, such as toys. All five of the previously known facial patches responded preferentially to moving faces over moving objects, suggesting that macaques have neural machinery dedicated to processing both faces and the movement associated with them. The scans also revealed a surprise: A sixth, previously unknown face patch, which the scientists refer to as the middle dorsal patch. “The middle dorsal patch turned up sporadically in response to static faces, but as soon as we started showing moving faces, it reliably appeared in each brain hemisphere for every macaque,” Fisher said. “A similar movement-preferring patch has been identified in humans, and it appears that the middle dorsal patch could be the macaque equivalent.”

Their experiments also uncovered a new puzzle; some of the patches were more responsive to normal movies depicting natural motion over movies containing the same series of movements jumbled together randomly. The other patches “preferred” the unnatural jumbled movies. It’s not clear why, but it is evidence of division of labor among the patches, Freiwald says. By better understanding what they do, individually and together, we will be able to better understand social behavior and its many disorders, he says.

“Recognizing someone, automatically assessing that person’s mood, maybe generating a smile back, these actions all depend on the brain’s ability to represent a face,” Freiwald says. “It is possible that the patches’ dual sensitivity to form and motion goes beyond simply integrating those attributes, and hints at how we become aware of and interact with a fellow being.”

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Monkeys can learn to see themselves in the mirror

Unlike humans and great apes, rhesus monkeys don’t realize when they look in a mirror that it is their own face looking back at them. But, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 8, that doesn’t mean they can’t learn. What’s more, once rhesus monkeys in the study developed mirror self-recognition, they continued to use mirrors spontaneously to explore parts of their bodies they normally don’t see.

The discovery in monkeys sheds light on the neural basis of self-awareness in humans and other animals.

“Our findings suggest that the monkey brain has the basic ‘hardware’ [for mirror self-recognition], but they need appropriate training to acquire the ‘software’ to achieve self-recognition,” says Neng Gong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In earlier studies, scientists had offered monkeys mirrors of different sizes and shapes for years, even beginning at a young age, Gong explains. While the monkeys could learn to use the mirrors as tools for observing other objects, they never showed any signs of self-recognition. When researchers marked the monkeys’ faces and presented them with mirrors, they didn’t touch or examine the spot or show any other self-directed behaviors in front of those mirrors in the way that even a very young person would do.

In the new study, Gong and his colleagues tried something else. They sat the monkeys in front of a mirror and shined a mildly irritating laser light on the monkeys’ faces. After 2 to 5 weeks of the training, those monkeys had learned to touch face areas marked by a spot they couldn’t feel in front of a mirror. They also noticed virtual face marks in mirroring video images on a screen. They had learned to pass the standard mark test for mirror self-recognition.

Most of the trained monkeys–five out of seven–showed typical mirror-induced self-directed behaviors, such as touching the mark on the face or ear and then looking and/or smelling at their fingers as if they were thinking something like, “Hey, what’s that there on my face?” They also used the mirrors in other ways that were unprompted by the researchers, to inspect other body parts.

The findings in monkeys come as hopeful news for people who are unable to recognize themselves in the mirror due to brain disorders such as mental retardation, autism, schizophrenia, or Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers say.

“Although the impairment of self-recognition in patients implies the existence of cognitive/neurological deficits in self-processing brain mechanisms, our finding raised the possibility that such deficits might be remedied via training,” they write. “Even partial restoration of self-recognition ability could be desirable.”

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New hope for Borneo’s orangutans despite threats of future climate change, deforestation

New conservation research has discovered that up to 74% of current orangutan habitat in Borneo could become unsuitable for this endangered species due to 21st century climate or land-cover changes.

However, the research has also identified up to 42,000km2 of land that could serve as potential orangutan refuges on the island, and could be relatively safe new habitats for the great ape to reside.

Published as ‘Anticipated climate and land-cover changes reveal refuge areas for Borneo’s orangutans’ by Global Change Biology, the research was conducted by Dr Matthew Struebig from the University of Kent’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), alongside colleagues from Liverpool John Moores University and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW). Further contributions were made by conservation scientists from Australia and Indonesia, in consultation with leading orangutan experts based in the Malaysian and Indonesian parts of Borneo.

Part of the work, conducted by the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Indonesia, used satellite images to map deforestation and estimate areas of forest change expected in the future.

The researchers also mapped land unsuitable for oil palm agriculture, one of the major threats to orangutans, and used this alongside information on orangutan ecology and climate to identify environmentally stable habitats for the species this century. The research demonstrates that continued efforts to halt deforestation could mediate some orangutan habitat loss, and this is particularly important in Borneo’s peat swamps, which are a home to large number of orangutans and are vital for climate change mitigation. Focusing conservation actions on these remote areas now would help to minimize orangutan losses in the future.

It is hoped that, since the relocation of endangered species is an expensive process, this research will contribute to conservationists’ understanding of how to identify appropriate areas which are safe from development as well as the effects of climate change.

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

Oil Dispute Takes a Page From Congo’s Bloody Past

Over 28,000 endangered lemurs illegally kept as pets in Madagascar may threaten conservation, survival of species

An estimated 28,000 lemurs, the world’s most endangered primates, have been illegally kept as pets in urban areas of Madagascar over the past three years, possibly threatening conservation efforts and hastening the extinction of some of lemur species, according to a study by Temple University researchers.

The researchers published the findings, “Live capture and ownership of lemurs in Madagascar: extent and conservation implications,” online Jan. 5, in the international conservation journal, Oryx.

Led by Temple biology doctoral student Kim Reuter, the researchers spent three months in Madagascar surveying over 1,000 households in 17 cities and villages across the country’s northern half about pet lemur ownership, which is illegal.

“We’ve been spending millions of dollars on lemur conservation in Madagascar, but despite spending all this money, no one has ever quantified the threat from the in-country pet lemur trade,” said Reuter. “If we’re spending these millions of dollars there to preserve these species, we should actually examine all the threats facing lemurs.”

Reuter, one of the creators of the Lemur Conservation Network for which she serves as director of outreach and content, said that although pet lemur ownership is illegal, enforcement of the law seems to be relatively weak. She said that even though researchers and conservationists are aware of the activity, they have historically focused their efforts on mitigating other threats like deforestation and hunting.

“We estimated that over 28 thousand lemurs are kept illegally as pets in Malagasy cities over the last three years alone,” said Reuter, who has recently been appointed to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. “You see it everywhere; even government officials and the people who are supposed to be enforcing the ban on pet lemurs own them.”

With at least 14 lemur species having populations of less than 10 thousand, Reuter said Madagascar’s extensive lemur pet ownership could be quickly driving some species closer to extinction, while even causing some populations to go extinct altogether.

“Now that we know that lemur pet ownership is happening, and happening at this scale, it’s an issue that we can’t ignore anymore,” she said, adding that lemur pet ownership must be factored into future conservation efforts.

“If people are going to keep lemurs as pets, then more outreach, regulation and enforcement is needed to ensure healthier captivity for the lemurs, especially in the big cities,” said Reuter, a research fellow at Conservation International while completing her Temple doctoral dissertation. “Conservation programs that don’t consider the pet trade of lemurs may unnecessarily increase their costs and risk extinction of the very lemur populations that they are trying to protect.”

In addition to Reuter, the researchers included Temple biology alumna Haley Gilles, Abigail Wills of the Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative in Tanzania, and Temple Assistant Professor of Biology Brent Sewall. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Explorers Club and a Temple Faculty Senate grant.

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Chimps Don’t Have Same Rights as Humans, Court Says

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Unique Sulawesi frog gives birth to tadpoles

University of California, Berkeley, herpetologist Jim McGuire was slogging through the rain forests of Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island one night this past summer when he grabbed what he thought was a male frog and found himself juggling not only a frog but also dozens of slippery, newborn tadpoles.

He had found what he was looking for: direct proof that the female of a new species of frog does what no other frog does. It gives birth to live tadpoles instead of laying eggs.

A member of the Asian group of fanged frogs, the new species was discovered a few decades ago by Indonesian researcher Djoko Iskandar, McGuire’s colleague, and was thought to give direct birth to tadpoles, though the frog’s mating and an actual birth had never been observed before.

“Almost all frogs in the world — more than 6,000 species — have external fertilization, where the male grips the female in amplexus and releases sperm as the eggs are released by the female,” McGuire said. “But there are lots of weird modifications to this standard mode of mating. This new frog is one of only 10 or 12 species that has evolved internal fertilization, and of those, it is the only one that gives birth to tadpoles as opposed to froglets or laying fertilized eggs.”

Iskander, McGuire and Ben Evans of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, named the species Limnonectes larvaepartus and fully describe it in this week’s issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

External vs. internal fertilization

Frogs have evolved an amazing variety of reproductive methods, says McGuire, an associate professor of integrative biology and curator of herpetology at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. Most male frogs fertilize eggs after the female lays them. About a dozen species, including California’s tailed frogs, have evolved ways to fertilize eggs inside the female’s body. However, the mechanisms of internal fertilization are poorly understood in all but California’s two species of tailed frogs, the latter of which have evolved a penis-like organ (the “tail”) that facilitates sperm transfer. Whereas the tailed frogs deposit their fertilized eggs under rocks in streams, the other frogs previously known to have internal fertilization give birth to froglets — miniature replicas of the adults.

Although internal fertilization is extremely rare among frogs, there are many other bizarre reproductive variations. Some frogs carry eggs in pouches on their back, brood tadpoles in their vocal sac or mouth, or transport tadpoles in pits on their back. The two known species of female gastric brooding frogs, both of which are now extinct, were famous for swallowing their fertilized eggs, brooding them in their stomach, and giving birth out of their mouths to froglets. Two genera in Africa engage in internal fertilization and give birth to froglets without going through a free-living tadpole stage.

Fanged frogs — so-called because of two fang-like projections from the lower jaw that are used in fighting — may have evolved into as many as 25 species on Sulawesi, though L. larvaepartus is only the fourth to be formally described. They range in size from 2-3 grams — the weight of a couple of paper clips — to 900 grams, or two pounds. L. larvaepartus is in the 5-6 gram range, McGuire said.

The new species seems to prefer to give birth to tadpoles in small pools or seeps located away from streams, possibly to avoid the heftier fanged frogs hanging out around the stream. There is some evidence the males may also guard the tadpoles.

Sulawesi a biodiversity hotspot

McGuire first encountered the newly described frog in 1998, the year he began studying the amazing diversity of reptiles and amphibians on Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo and south of the Philippines. The island is a geographical hodgepodge, having formed from the merger of several islands about 8-10 million years ago.

“Sulawesi is an incredible place from the standpoint of species diversity endemic to the island as well as in situ diversification,” he said, noting that most places on the island are home to at least five species of fanged frogs living side by side.

Although many vertebrate species have diversified on the island after arriving by overwater “sweepstakes” dispersal, most — such as the flying lizards and black-crested macaque monkeys — have speciated in such a way that their geographic ranges are non-overlapping, with their ranges meeting like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. The fanged frogs are special, McGuire says, because they appear to represent a virtually unexplored adaptive radiation with many species occurring at the same sites but adapted to occupy distinct ecological niches.

“We are really interested in understanding how much of Sulawesi’s in situ diversification was initiated on the paleo-islands, or if much or even all of the diversification was postmerger,” he said.

Much of McGuire’s work to date has been with the simpler non-adaptive radiations of the flying lizards and macaques. Fanged frogs present an even more exciting challenge, he says, because their diversification likely was influenced not only by the dynamic tectonics of Sulawesi, but also by adaptive radiation via ecological diversification.

McGuire and his colleagues and students have collected reptiles and amphibians throughout the island — flying lizards are his particular love — and taken genetic samples to reconstruct the evolution of species over time and perhaps shed light on how and when the islands came together.

He also is working with Iskandar to prepare a monograph on the identification, distribution and biology of the fanged frogs on the island.

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