Field Work Nombor Tiga: Borneo

It's been four years, but my ecological escapades are returning me to Malaysia.

Mairin, you say, how is it that you are yet again in the same place? Have you found yourself in a Star Trek style temporal causality loop at long last? 

Hold your horses, oh cynical and surprisingly condescending hypothetical readers. For although I am, yet again, in Malaysia, on this go-round I am in Borneo.

Borneo: an island I have imagined visiting since...well, since I first learned of its existence and its importance to early naturalists and ecologists. The island is the fourth largest in the world, borders the Wallace line (a an imaginary line that separates ecoregions in Asia), and is an important biodiversity hotspot. It's better than Disneyland for someone like me!

Borneo was also a massive influence to Alfred R. Wallace. While living in Borneo, Wallace penned his On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species, an essay that concluded "Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a closely allied species" and presented an early discussion of what would become biogeography.

Three years later, Wallace would write On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type, an independent description of natural selection. After Wallace sent a copy of the essay to Darwin (whom he had met and kept correspondence with) to request feedback, Darwin picked up the ideas with enthusiasm. Wallace's essay was published alongside some of Darwin's early writings on natural selection in Linnean Society of London (which was initially overlooked).

A few years later, Darwin finally got around to publishing a manuscript he had been working on for quite some time - On the Origin of Species - and the significance of Wallace's and Darwin's earlier work was recognized.

Wallace says: "I think Borneo's pretty neat, too!"

*Seriously, if you don't know this incredible story of two amazing naturalists and their interesting friendship, read up on it. Wallace is a hero of mine, and was not only a wonderful scientific mind but also very socially progressive and an avid writer on economics and morality. 

What are you doing back in Malaysia?

This time around, I might be helping out with as many as four unique projects under an umbrella expedition put forward by the Sabah Biodiversity Centre and Forestry Centre. It's still a little bit up in the air, and the details of what I'll get up to are unclear.

The overall project is a biological survey in the UNDP area, a region between Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin - two incredible pristine regions of Borneo. I will primarily be camera trapping and performing transect censuses, although I'm hoping to get my fingers into the pies of the other research topics as well (including seedling persistence, carbon fixation, and dung beetle ecology - how neat is that?)

 

That's pretty neat!

What is camera trapping?, you might be asking. Well, camera trapping is a form of remote animal capture. First, you set up a motion-activated camera, often by affixing it to a tree:

in a place like this:

to get photos like this:

I'm keeping my hopes up that we'll catch a monkey selfie like this one...fingers crossed!

With the camera trap images, I can do some work looking at animal diversity and abundance in different areas. Although I'm not 100% certain at this point if I can work my current field work's data into my MSc project, it's still going to be a ton of fun going out into the field.

That, plus transects, will be the main focus of my work here.

But let's talk more about Borneo.

Not only is this island important to me historically, but the animals that live here are incredibly diverse and unique. From flying frogs (thanks for that one too, Wallace) to forest elephants to orangutans.

In case you needed to know what a flying frog looks like, this is what a flying frog looks like.

Or, more accurately, like this.

I'd love to catch a glimpse of any one of these critters. In fact, I'm itching for the field enough that I got a little rise of excitement out of a cockroach I saw in the gutter this evening.

...sigh - I wish I were joking...but that cockroach was a unique species I'd never seen before!

Soon enough, I'll be straining my eyes for sight of anything in the dense jungle, ears searching for croaking frogs, hooting hornbills, singing gibbons, bellowing orangutans...all while swatting away at mosquitos and dripping with sweat, mud, and leeches.

I can't wait!