Date: February 25, 2019
Source: University of Toronto
University
of Toronto student George Sandler was shocked to see the rainforest floor
suddenly come to life around him, as if in a scene from an Indiana Jones movie.
"The
forest floor started rustling around me," says Sandler, "as dozens of
crabs emerged from holes and crevices. Some were huge, the size of dinner
plates. I even spotted a hermit crab climbing up a tree, lugging its heavy
shell along with it."
But
Sandler wasn't in the field to study crabs. He was in the Dominican Republic to
take a census of the region's Anolis lizard species for a study on the effects
of deforestation being conducted by researchers Luke Mahler, Luke Frishkoff and
collaborators. In the Caribbean nation, deforestation is the main form of
natural habitat loss as residents cut down rainforest in order to produce
charcoal, as well as create pastures for livestock and farmland for crops.
It is no
surprise that deforestation has a profound effect on biodiversity; scientists
have been studying this problem around the globe for decades. What is
surprising is the difficulty they still face in making detailed predictions
about which species survive, especially in relation to other factors such as
climate change and natural local conditions.
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