EOL Makes Connections in Southeast Asia
Audrey Aronowsky
The countryside in Taiwan, the city of Taichung and Dr. Shao.
From August 11-17th I traveled to Taichung, Taiwan to attend the TaiBNet (Taiwan Biodiversity National Information Network) 2008 Workshop on the status of Taiwan species diversity, organized by Dr. Shao Kwang-Tsao and hosted at the National Museum of Natural Sciences. This conference was held to address the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) mandate to “achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth.” This conference was an opportunity for Taiwan to evaluate the current situation of its biodiversity and map out some estimated future trends.
At the meeting over 200 researchers and students from all over Taiwan each made presentations on the status of the major organismal groups in Taiwan, including mosses, insects, mammals, worms, molluscs, flowering plants, fungi, and reptiles. I was one of 6 invited international participants and gave the opening lecture titled “The Encyclopedia of Life; an open access resource for information on all species living on earth”, which was very well received. It was a rare chance to meet with people from many of the leading Southeast Asian database partners including “Species 2000 China Node” and Fishbase, digital learning and communication are extremely popular in Taiwan, so there was great interest in EOL. I expect at least 3 synthesis meeting proposals to come out of the meeting and possibly many more.
Dr. Chen Tien Hsi measuring a turtle
Also on my trip I was lucky enough to be able to assist Dr. Chen Tien-Hsi for a half day before flying back to the US. Dr. Chen, a conservation biologist in northern Taiwan, and former student of Dr. Shao, traps native turtles in ponds and forests in Taiwan to monitor the size and condition of local populations. He checks his traps every 2-3 days, so it’s a continuous cycle of wading through ponds and hiking through dense jungle. We found three IUCN endangered turtle species while checking the traps in a small protected area near Keelung; Ocadia sinensis, Cuora flavomarginata, and Mauremys mutica. Cuora, the Chinese box turtle, is extremely rare and is interesting because it evolved the ability to seal itself into its shell separately from the more common North American box turtles. Mauremys mutica, the Asian yellow pond turtle, was very active in this area and is known for its ability to hybridize with other turtle species. Ocadia sinesis, the Chinese stripe-necked turtle, is rarely seen in the wild in Taiwan, where it is threatened by habitat destruction. We released one of these after measuring and photographing it, and it kept running back into the turtle trap! He ran back into the trap three times before finally making it back to the pond, here he on try number two:
I would like to say a special thanks to Professor Shao and to his students, particularly Ching, Burke, Seven, Lee-Sea, and Jin Hua. They were excellent hosts and I would have been lost without their translation skills.