Snakes on active volcano test nerve of Kiwi scientist
Hunting for snakes on an active volcano isn’t your average day job.
But for one intrepid New Zealand scientist, that’s just another day in a project following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin.
Massey University’s Dr Luis Ortiz Catedral has been closely involved in a joint effort on the Galapagos Islands, where the abundance of endemic species famously contributed to Darwin’s classic theories around evolution and natural selection.
The Pacific archipelago is home to reptiles of all shapes and sizes from giant tortoises to iguanas, lizards and geckos.
More seldom seen are its elusive resident snakes.
Ortiz-Catedral, a conservation biologist at Massey’s Institute of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, said snakes were also not often considered as worthy of conservation.
And popular portrayals like that of the iguana chased by snakes on BBC’s Planet Earth II had reinforced the idea they are something to fear.
“They may not be cute and fuzzy, but the incredible creatures are worthy of conservation and are actually very docile,” he said.
“However, since Darwin collected the first specimen in 1835, their biology has largely remained a mystery and has been understudied.
“In order to protect them, and even reintroduce them to islands where they once lived, field work and lab work was needed to get a firm grasp of their diversity, biology and more.”
A collaboration between Galapagos National Park Directorate (GNDP) and University of California that Ortiz-Catedral launched in 2015 has aimed to better understand this diversity — along with the evolutionary relationship between these species and snakes on the South American continent.
The research team focused on studying live specimens in the wild — something that meant scouring islands, finding more than 400 snakes, photographing them and taking tissue samples.
Ortiz-Catedral said that task had been “monumental” in size, but was now paying off.
Their research had since determined that most species and subspecies were restricted to a single island and its adjacent islets.
Dr Luis Ortiz-Catedral will give a lecture on the project as part of Massey’s Fascination of Science lecture series, at 7pm tomorrow at the university’s Albany campus.