Q&A Blog | Reptile Awareness Day
Rafe Brown
Crawl into this Reptile Awareness Day Q&A blog with Dr. Rafe Brown, a celebrated herpetologist, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and the Curator-in-Charge of Herpetology at the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum! Explore the fascinating world of Dr. Brown’s herpetology research, which is focused on the biodiversity and conservation of amphibians and reptiles in Southeast Asia’s island archipelagos. Dr. Brown’s extensive studies and projects have significantly contributed to our understanding and preservation of these incredible creatures!
Throughout your extensive work in Southeast Asian archipelagos, what has been the most surprising discovery about herpetological diversity in the region?
I suppose the short answer would involve the discovery of particular species, new to science, from tiny species of snakes the size of a pencil that live underground to a new species of giant, spectacularly-colored, fruit-eating monitor lizard that lives high up in the treetops of the northern Philippines. Each of these discoveries has been poignantly memorable and surprising for me and my collaborators and students. However, personally, I have to admit that I am amazed and humbled by a few of the “Eureka!” moments during our many follow-ups or revisits to our own earlier work when we can obtain new kinds of data or even analyze “old” data with new methodological approaches. In a few of these cases, we have gone back, looked again, and have been astounded to uncover something completely unexpected—which contradicted our earlier findings. Those are certainly humbling moments, but they’re also absolutely fascinating…and I’m left shaking my head, thinking, “How in the world did we all miss this?” Or: “If I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes, I never would’ve believed it.” Let me illustrate this with the case of a group of Philippine snakes that until recently nobody understood. For the past 200 years, biologists had diligently named about ten species or subspecies, and grouped them into four larger named clusters, or genera, and all of which were known only from the archipelago. Despite the progress, the world’s brightest “snake-ologists” had been unable to determine what they might be related to. They were compared to other families of snakes from outside the archipelago but, because the physical characteristics of these mysterious Philippine snakes were so odd and variable, experts in snake classification disagreed, or kind of gave up, and treated them as unsolvable mysteries from the 1960s through 2020. Zoom forward: it took our team 30 years to amass specimens and associated genetic samples representing most of the named forms. When the last samples were collected, we initiated a study to collect DNA sequences and estimate their evolutionary relationships and, to our amazement, we found that these problematic oddballs were not actually each related to various groups from outside the archipelago, as had been hypothesized for two centuries…they were related to each other! What a surprise that was!
We used a time-calibrated phylogeny to determine the approximate age of this new clade (who are distributed nowhere else in the world), and turns out they have been evolving and diversifying exclusively in the Philippines for something on the order of 40 million years! Now, this ragtag assemblage of a strange, poorly-known, widely variable but, honestly, pretty boring (most are little, brown nondescript, burrowing species) group of snakes is recognized as the country’s first and only exclusively Philippine family of snakes: the Cyclocoridae. I think that’s pretty cool, because even though scientist continue to find new species these days, it’s quite rare and unusual to “discover” a whole new family. In retrospect, of course, they were there all along, and we just didn’t appreciate their significance because we didn’t understand their evolutionarily relationships. Here’s the clincher: additional studies have now shown that the family Cyclocoridae (known only from the Philippines!), played a very important role in the early evolution of a major group of medically important, and highly venomous snakes. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but when we go back in time and deeper into their evolutionary history, it turns out this handful of little brown Philippine snake anomalies are most closely related to the ancestors of the scariest snakes on Earth: the globally distributed group which includes coral snakes, sea snakes, kraits, stiletto snakes, mambas, and cobras. Who could have imagined THAT? Not me—And I’ve been thinking about this stuff my whole adult life.
Given the rapid environmental changes and habitat loss, what are the most pressing challenges in preserving biodiversity in Southeast Asian hotspots?
This question involves some commonalities across the whole region but also requires that we consider some striking differences in terms of specific threats facing different archipelagoes across the Australasian region. More than twenty years ago, I met some of my close collaborators and colleagues of today by participating in an International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) global amphibian conservation assessment workshop that was held in Thailand in 2001. It was interesting to compare the differing and variable perceptions (of just what constituted “threats” to biodiversity) that were held by field biologists working in these hotspots—e.g., scientists working on Borneo versus those from Java and Sumatra, researchers from the Asian mainland, versus others from eastern Indonesia or the Philippines. Many very region-specific threats were identified and, over the last two decades, have been addressed for those challenges with varying degrees of success—such as eradication programs targeting invasive species on small islands, stemming illegal bushmeat trade, or apprehending illegal pet trade smugglers. But the overarching commonality, on which everyone could agree (and which has only worsened with time since my our understanding of its impact), is the devastating effects of anthropogenic destruction and degradation of natural habitats: removal of forests for commercial timber profit and subsequent replacement with sugar, palm, and coconut plantations; small-scale clearing of forests for agriculture; coastal development and shrimp or fish farms that completely eliminate mangroves; draining of natural freshwater wetlands; mining and logging at high elevation which disturbs mid- and upper-montane ecosystem function and all downstream hydrology…the list goes on and on. The common theme is the destruction of many natural habitat types, which results in catastrophic loss of many, or all, of the species that depend on natural, relatively undisturbed forests for survival.
Can you discuss a particularly challenging field experience you have had during your research? How did it influence your approach to your studies?
By far, the most challenging field experience I have endured was a two month expedition to Leyte and Samar islands, in the aftermath of the deadliest Philippine typhoon, named “Haiyan.” This super storm first made landfall on November 7th, 2013, with sustained winds of 145–195 miles per hour, making it the most powerful tropical cyclone in recorded history at that time. It cut a broad swath of destruction through the central part of the archipelago, killed more than 6,350 people, and completely devastated Tacloban City, on the east coast of Leyte. In addition to the catastrophic loss of property and human life, several of the forested sites we had studied over the last decade also were severely impacted. We saw an opportunity to determine the overall effects of such a powerful typhoon on forest biodiversity. With special funding from the U.S National Science Foundation, we proposed to return to some of our earlier field sites and revisit the same places where we had conducted baseline biodiversity surveys before the disaster. The eastern Philippines is hit with between 20 to 30 typhoons a year, and natural disturbance is a big part of the dynamics of forest communities; what could be more interesting? I had heard stories of colleagues studying lizard community change in the aftermath of hurricanes in the Caribbean, so it seemed like we had a chance to do something similar on the other side of the world. We had heard so much about the devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban City, we had previously experienced other typhoons and their aftermath, and we thought we were prepared.
When we finally arrived, after a long 3 or 4 day trip, driving across islands, taking car ferries between islands (because the Tacloban airport was still only partially functional and, at that point, only a very limited number of commercial flights could get in because the one functional runway was reserved for cargo and medical supplies flights, as part of the relief effort), and we were suddenly facing the enormous magnitude of the destruction and suffering…and it was just absolutely heartbreaking. Tacloban had been transformed: block after city block was in ruins, buildings swept away by the storm surge (only their foundations remained); even a mile or two from the coast, there were collapsed buildings everywhere, telephone poles and wires all over the place, and a massive ship—some kind of a tanker—had washed up into the city and was blocking traffic across six or eight cross streets where it had come to rest. In that moment, for several days in what was left of Tacloban City, I was preoccupied by the logistical challenges (looking for supplies, kerosene, rope, lanterns, shovels, tarps, buckets; all the stuff we needed in order to make camp—and all of which was all sold out, of course). We did the best we could, and drove to the center of Samar Island, away from the coasts, and found a decent place for our first field site, surrounded by toppled trees and a forest with its canopy stripped away. We managed to get to get started but over the next couple of weeks I became sort of emotionally overwhelmed by the incredible scale of the tragedy and it was very difficult to focus on my work. Tacloban prior to Typhoon Haiyan had been a vibrant city, full of history and culture, that we loved to visit—with all sorts of restaurants and cafés, beachfront bars, galleries, coffee shops, barbecue stands, and markets. But in May and June of 2014, the reality hit me very hard: so many of those places and people were just gone: their lives lost to a giant wave. It seemed incomprehensible that so many thousands of people all drowned simultaneously, within the span of a few hours.
Luckily, we had an excellent field team (who made do without our usual backcountry camping amenities) and, fortunately, the branch of the Philippine government tasked with managing natural resources and biodiversity conservation was open for business (working out of temporary UNICEF disaster-relief tents, but with no relief from tropical heat; their commitment to their mission was really so impressive and humbling to witness), so we were able to obtain our permits and do the research. The whole experience was troubling, because the of the city’s struggling human condition, thousands of displaced survivors in tent camps on the city’s outskirts, and the widespread suffering in the surrounding provinces. In retrospect, despite all the camping supplies we brought from the U.S. to offset Tacloban’s empty hardware stores, I realize that I wasn’t really very well prepared at all. I considered myself to be a pretty seasoned field biologist at that point in my career, and I knew working on Leyte and Samar islands right after Typhoon Haiyan was going to be really hard, with difficult field conditions, delays, added expenses, and complex logistics. I was ready for “hard,” and I thought I had prepared everyone on our team for the tough months ahead—and the team did perform well, all things considered. But I was unprepared for gut-wrenching human suffering, widespread hopelessness, and heartbreak—and it all combined for me in a really confusing way; I was emotionally overwhelmed, and distracted—which isn’t good, when one is supposed to be leading a 20-person, two-month expedition into a remote field site. It took me some time after that trip to unravel it all, and unpack my emotions. It was terrifying and I still have anxiety dreams about it all. And today, when I remember those scenes, I still get emotional, my heart races, and I get a lump in my throat—none of which compares to the trauma that so many people had to endure on that November day, ten years ago.
As the curator of the KU Herpetological Collections, how do you see the role of such institutions evolving in the wake of the biodiversity crisis, especially considering digital advancements and global collaboration?
The role of these kinds of global comparative reference collections, and the institutions that care for the, will only increase in importance disproportionately in years to come. Large, integrated, well-curated natural history collections (that are proactively managed with relational databases freely served to the public domain via the internet) are absolutely central to all of the credible efforts to mitigate the biodiversity crisis, and stem extinction by deeply understanding the threats, in the forms of emerging infectious disease, climate change, invasive species introductions, habitat destruction, and other human mediated conversion of natural habitat to increasingly urbanized landscapes of the Anthropocene. These focal areas would never have been identified—and could never have become the subdisciplines of biodiversity and conservation science that they are today—without specimen-associated data from properly curated, freely-accessible, open-access natural history collections. And whatever the next emerging disease of amphibians turns out to be, whichever species of reptile moves to the top of the list of worst invasive species in the U.S. state of Florida, or whatever Hawaiian endemic bird goes extinct next, we can be sure the solution to preventing our wholesale planetary slide down that slippery slope will be heavily informed by data from the really exemplary natural history collections, that manage their data properly, curate all the metadata linked to collection objects, share all species occurrences online, regularly update species identifications, and fully embrace the “extended specimen concept” by repatriating (back-linking) downstream digital derivatives archived at online repositories—like DNA sequences archived at GenBank, and CT scans lodged at MorphoSource—back to the original specimen from which they were derived.
Full transparency, equitability, and access on a global scale is clearly the only way forward. Today’s conservationist can self-serve the data they need to perform rigorous analyses of everything from shifts in species’ distributions in response to climate change over the last several centuries (from which we can extrapolate future scenarios), to very accurate quantitative analyses of the statistical ‘space’ a species occupies (not just its distribution but also its ecological niche) in order to evaluate its conservation status, and assess whether it is really endangered, or just infrequently encountered. We take that two-way-street philosophy very seriously, as stewards of legitimately curated collections of global scope and, although of course I can’t speak for everybody in the museum community, I think it’s fair to say that most of us are very deeply, and personally committed to this mission of putting real data into the hands of legitimate biodiversity scientists and global change biologists.
To me, it’s absolutely fascinating, at this moment in history, to witness the remarkable varieties of new applications, kinds of questions one can ask, and the myriad of research uses our specimens now have, as a result of rapid development of new technologies. Things I never could’ve imagined 15 years ago: kinds of data—that come directly from the specimens, and for which the global conservation community has no other source—that no one could possibly have imagined 50 or 100 years ago. These developments have made global natural history collections with historically significant legacy collections, irreplaceable, and more relevant than ever. None of the future’s bright ideas, scientific breakthroughs, technological innovations, conservation actions, or even preventative measures mobilized today will have the capacity to ameliorate future unknowable crises, if the clues to unraveling the origin of an emerging infectious disease, for example, can only be teased apart in particular species, which has gone extinct and is unrepresented in collections. When the limiting factor or critical resource to make use of those breakthroughs, technologies and innovations becomes scientists’ access to preserved biological specimens—just as we have seen so many times in the last few decades—preserved museum specimens and associated data, archived in well-maintained, publicly-accessible natural history collections literally is our collective global insurance policy in the face of humanity’s unknowable future.
Could you elaborate on a recent significant contribution your research has made toward understanding evolutionary processes or conservation efforts in the region?
I am a biogeographer, meaning that I study the factors related to the evolution of species’ geographical ranges. I’m fundamentally interested in how species came to be in the places we observe them today, what biological interactions, tolerances, or physical attributes of a landscape limit species to particular areas, and I tend to focus on historical events or processes, which may inform us about how species’ distributions were shaped by deep history, geological processes, historical contingencies, or an organism’s own capacity for long-distance dispersal. I use genomic DNA sequences to estimate evolutionary branching relationships among closely-related groups of species, and time calibrated estimates of those phylogenies to test hypotheses by ruling out (“rejecting” in statistical hypothesis-testing lingo) one or more competing alternative explanations from the literature. The fun thing about doing this kind of work in a biodiversity hotspot island archipelago, is that there are so many different groups of organisms on which to focus, compare and contrast, and the questions keep coming; the work is never done, and each answer leads to more questions. I love revisiting our own earlier studies, when technology changes, or when we have better sampling, or new methods. I have “re-done” my master’s thesis four times and I’ve learned something new every time.
With that said, a lot of our earlier studies, focused on ways, in which conclusions derived from our own empirical studies, lead to a myriad of exceptions to the “rules” set in place over the last century, and which were derived from classic formative studies earlier researchers are of the last 125 year. Among all those patterns emerged a set of things we thought we knew, about how species diversity in the Philippines has originated, evolved, accumulated, was partitioned, and ultimately maintained over thousands to millions of years in the archipelago—and leading to today is remarkably biodiverse Philippine Archipelago, where the concentration of land vertebrates per unit area may be higher than anywhere else in the world. What could be more exciting? Well, over the last half a century, a dominant biogeographical “paradigm” had emerged, and its eloquently simple assumptions and seemingly straightforward mechanism seemed to explain almost everything, in terms of coincident, repeated patterns of species distributions in unrelated taxa—and suggesting a common mechanism possibly governing evolutionary processes of diversification in most everything from ants to lizards, to birds, to rodents, and frogs—all in the form of a “species pump,” and the previously hypothesized idea that rising and falling at sea levels during the ice ages, actually generated diversity, triggering speciation via isolation among the many organisms coinhabiting different island groups. The difficulty came when we studied more and more groups with DNA sequence data and time calibrated phylogenies, and we found one way after another, in which all these different organisms deviated from the predictions of that model. This was troubling at first, because our results contradicted so many classic studies published earlier including widely-accepted, textbook examples in biodiversity studies. At a certain point, after being frustrated by so many studies that just didn’t fit the classic, expected pattern, we just “got over it” and started focusing instead on just what the data revealed in each case. I remember that time as thrilling and liberating, as we found case after case, in groups of organisms with wildly different evolutionary histories and timelines by which they diversified—along with very pronounced differences in underlying geographical patterns, which suggested surprisingly different processes of diversification. In the back of my mind over those years was the expectation that, eventually, we would find the clues to understanding how these many different groups of animals rejected the predictions of the species pump model—and in so many different ways. In one particular group of lizards, geckos we had been collecting throughout the archipelago for years, we got a break, My former graduate student Jamie dedicated considerable time and attention to thinking deeply about our industry-standard methods for testing hypotheses of shared mechanisms of diversification in unrelated species (a subdiscipline termed “codiversification”). He had an epiphany relating to how evolutionary relationships are incorporated into those analyses and he implemented his elegant idea in a new method for testing among populations for temporally-clustered genetic divergences. Lo and behold, what emerged, finally, was really solid strong support for classic species pump model. We consider this work to be the first strong statistical evidence for temporally-clustered divergence events. It robustly supports the interpretation that that oscillating sea levels, which rose and fell over and over during the ice ages and which joined and disconnected landmasses, did trigger widespread evolutionary divergences across the archipelago, in many cases even full speciation as a result of isolation—all of which contributed to a remarkable radiation of gecko species diversity we observe today. Having some of these full-circle, “Eureka!-moment” experiences in one’s career, after focusing on the questions for decades, is sort of like winning the lottery for a science nerd like me.
How do you integrate local communities and authorities in the countries where you work into your research and conservation efforts? Have there been initiatives ensuring the participation and education of these groups?
They certainly are. Thanks in large part to the last 20 or 30 years of the Philippine central government’s implementation of biodiversity conservation policy, and the government’s movement towards equitable structures for research permits, specimen-collecting permits and, in particular, land-access permissions, the process of doing a field-based and specimen-based biodiversity research now involves regular checks and balances. This applies to research conducted by foreigners, but also by Filipino professionals, students—everyone. And it ensures broad participation from local government units, stakeholder communities (people living in and around protected areas), and indigenous people’s groups throughout the country. Before any research is conducted, researchers must visit the target areas, have discussions with local leaders, undertake courtesy calls with non-government community organizations, law enforcement, and the leaders of local towns and villages, to explain the research in detail—particularly to those communities who might be impacted by research in their area, who stand to gain from biodiversity information products, and who may be interested to participate and collaborate. We have found this approach to be rewarding and deeply satisfying, especially considering the improvement that it represents over the way biodiversity inventories and expeditionary research was conducted a century ago. Today, all of our collaborative fieldwork takes the form of full collaboration, from start to finish, with mutually agreed-upon co-benefits and outcomes, tailored to the interests and concrete deliverables sought by community stakeholders in the regions where we conduct our work. We usually have as much to learn from local communities and indigenous peoples’ groups, as we have to teach. Teaming up this way, in mutually-beneficial collaboration, results in much more positive outcomes, and much more productive, scholarly advancements in our field. It’s not just “the right thing to do” but it’s the most profitable and productive thing to do, in terms of outreach, public education, and our shared goal of advancing the public appreciation for the remarkable terrestrial biodiversity in the archipelago.
Taxonomy is often considered a ‘dying field.’ How do you advocate for the importance of continued taxonomic studies, and what innovative methods are you using to keep this field vital?
Heh-heh, yes: a “dying” field indeed, practiced predominantly by old-timer lone taxonomists in the basements of dusty museums; it’s a convenient stereotype. But over the last 500 years of our time on earth, it has been this fundamental skillset that has generated the product—our understanding of diversity of life on Earth—on which everything else depends. It’s true that some taxonomic traditions (in particular, vagaries of naming conventions) are often demonstrably subjective and arbitrary as practiced today; many are judged as being “boring” because they are descriptive, overly and unnecessarily technical, etc.—it’s all true. Still, with time, I have also come to think of many such stereotypes as caricatures, which are repeated so often, because they allow folks to dismiss scholarship without trying to understand it. And, let’s face it: we all sort of “let ourselves off the hook,” when trying to comprehend something that’s complex, or difficult, or tricky to really understand. Taxonomy usually involves a lengthy historical context behind obscure concepts, and prevailing opinions expressed in the literature have changed through time, with the development of biological thought. I see a lot of parallels between critiques of taxonomy in general, and the somewhat elaborate excuse systems we sociologically adopt in peer groups, to justify our non-attention to difficult tasks, avoid hard work that we’d rather not do, or decide not to take the time to delve deeply into a large body of literature on a topic that’s not familiar to us . I get it: this stuff is hard, and we’ve all encountered tasks that seem so huge, foreign, or dumb, that they feel impossible—resulting in our own unwillingness to try and understand—or that’s the excuse we tell ourselves. Why should we have to read this stuff and try to understand it, and worse yet, possibly navigate text in another language, when there’s a Wikipedia page online, a smartphone in our pocket, and in a matter of seconds, an unidentified author of a non-peer-reviewed online summary is conveniently telling us what to think? But here’s the thing: much of this old obscure taxonomic literature is the foundation of a 500-year tradition involving humanity’s attempt to make sense of Earth’s biodiversity, understand speciation, and unravel the mysteries of creation. I’m not ashamed to point out that I have found some brilliant insights, critical for untangling complex evolutionary questions, in old taxonomic monographs. So, if the subject matter is something I care about, I’m going to read everything I can, including taxonomic papers, diaries, unpublished field notes, whatever—everything!—because I’d rather not let someone else do my thinking for me, there is almost always something to be learned by focusing on first principles, and science is not just a story about ideas, but also the people who conceived of those ideas. The best place to find a hot, new, cutting-edge, or “big idea” in science is still a dusty old book; and on the occasions that I’ve found real gems in old taxonomic literature, I have benefited from trying to get to know the person behind the narrative. Case in point: that classic biogeographic “paradigm” that I mentioned earlier (and spent more than 20 years trying to test!): that idea had been attributed to later researchers who promoted it from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, but it was actually first clearly articulated in an obscure old-fashioned taxonomic monograph published in 1954, on amphibians of the Philippines! If I wasn’t such a frog geek, I might never have found it. I’m sure I don’t need to mention how thrilling it was (in 2022), to come full circle back to that simple idea, and be part of the team who were lucky enough to provide the first really strong statistical support for the existence of that “species pump” (with cutting edge genomic resources, supercomputers, and crazy new math). I love it that, in the end, it was the old-fashioned, last century frog taxonomist who got it right—almost as much as I love the romantic idea of a shared mechanisms of diversification, common to many unrelated forms of island life, and functioning through deep time at the scale of the entire archipelago. And, if we’re correct, all very eerily reminiscent of the way Dr. Robert Inger hypothesized the basics in his 1954 frog monograph.
Looking toward the future, what are your next big research questions, and how do you plan to address the continuously evolving challenges presented by climate change and human activity in biodiversity hotspots?
As alluded to above, the “next big research question” is a quantity that I personally have found by keeping my “heart close to the fire,” and focusing on the topics that really interest me, the ideas that I’m passionate about, or the subjects that just get my adrenaline running. It hasn’t escaped my attention that I somehow ended up being “blessed” with a pure and simple fascination for the animals themselves; they inspire me. I have most of my best ideas when I am in the forest, simultaneously observing and thinking about their private lives. But I think I got lucky in the sense that it’s even more basic than that for me. I look at black and white figures in old school taxonomic publications and wonder if I’ll ever be fortunate to meet that species in life, myself? And many times, years later, when we’ve finally tracked down a particularly rare species, a wildly-colored frog, or an elaborately-scaled gecko, and I’m finally holding it in my own hands, and it’s more beautiful than I could have imagined; and I think “hello my old friend, at last we meet!” So, yeah, I think I got lucky in the sense that I just really love the animals themselves, and I really am motivated by the simple challenge of trying to find them, figure out their habitat preferences, understand their natural history, and document their geographical distributions. It’s also important for me to acknowledge the privilege I grew up with: my hard-working parents who are both teachers, value education a above everything else, paid for the majority of my fancy education, and instructed me to adhere to a singular directive—that I should “follow my bliss.” Of course, there are a lot of people, particularly people from diverse backgrounds, who are attracted and inspired by animals, but never have the luxury, the support, the opportunities, or the resources to develop those interests, and pursue silly indulgences like my 1998 “quest,” a lengthy road trip with my buddy Arvin, where we set out to re-discover four species of frogs, described almost a century ago, and not reencountered or recorded by scientists since those obscure taxonomic papers of the early 1900s. That quick that trip was quite the adventure, but let’s face it: not a lot of people have the time, the luxury, the funding, a reliable vehicle, access to the original literature and the original specimens—all of which enabled us to track down those four “lost” frogs. I think about that a lot, because on so many trips into Philippine forests, and when I routinely employ local residents as helpers, or people from indigenous tribal groups as guides (people who live in the forest and know it so much better than I do). On so many of those occasions, I went out at night to catch frog specimens for research, and they accompanied me to catch frogs for their family’s dinner. That difference—and disparity of worldview on a topic so simple as a frog—is something I have thought about frequently over the years. I remember, 30 years ago, thinking it was humorous that my assistants were hunting frogs for their own culinary purposes, and smiling to myself at the kinds of naïve questions I would get from guides—usually along the lines of: what in the world I was going to do with these preserved frogs when I got them back to Manila or the United States? Over the years, it sunk in, and I realized it wasn’t funny: I became ashamed of my privileged cluelessness. Of course, they couldn’t readily conceive of utility in my preserved frog specimens; amphibians in their life experience were basically good for one thing: a handy source of protein.
In my personal journey, academic education, research career, and efforts to strive for the most inclusive, equitable, and humane set of practices for conducting biodiversity research, I have found that simply “following my nose” is often the best approach—for me at least. I have learned this lesson repeatedly: just when I think I understand something in great detail about the archipelago, something else pops up. It is difficult to predict exactly what the next “big idea” will be or what form that may take; the revolution in genomic data accessibility that has unfolded over the past decade certainly has taught us how the real world is much messier than we thought it was 20 years ago during the single gene-locus era in phylogenetics; but that makes it more exciting and cooler than ever. By staying flexible and willing to pivot to a new type of data or a new strategy for hypothesis testing, I hope to remain flexible and keep my attention on the gratitude and humility I feel (for continually being welcomed by Filipinos to contribute to the understanding of biodiversity in their country). I guess I try to remain acutely aware that I may need to go back, with a critical eye and healthy scientific skepticism, and be willing to look at my own previous interpretations, and reevaluate my conclusions of the past. Maybe that’s why we refer to it as “re-search?” In any case, we can be quite certain that the activities of humans—climate change, and the continually expanding numbers of people in and around the last remaining natural areas on earth—will require us to change many of our assumptions and conclusions of today. And while, I certainly do not look forward to the ongoing degradation and fragmentation of the Earth’s last remaining natural areas, I do look forward to the expansion of our collective understanding of the causes behind global change, and I have to believe that this will come with an enhanced appreciation of the evolutionary processes of diversification that produced our planet’s biodiversity.