By Chris Hagan
Review Staff Writer
Two professors from Oakland University were recently in South America following up on an ecological study conducted more than 40 years ago.
Keith Berven, a 30-year-resident of Lake Orion, and his colleague Scott Tiegs, spent five days in late May surveying the reptile and amphibian population in northern Ecuador.
Berven surveyed the area back in 1971 as an undergraduate student at Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, Wash.) after his school received a grant for the study.
Now 44 years later, the pair wanted to see how the diversity of the reptile and amphibian population had changed over the past four decades in light of major environmental changes in the area.
‘With the discovery of large oil deposits near the area of our study in Ecuador, roads now crisscross the area, small towns and cities have developed along these roads and large tracts of land have been cleared,? Berven said. ‘As development increases, it is important to preserve as much of the tremendous biodiversity found in tropical forests as possible.?
Since his visit that area he once studied was kept largely intact as it was incorporated into the Limoncocha Biological Reserve; a 13,000 acre nature preserve 229 miles outside of Quito, Ecuador’s capital.
In order to make the two studies as similar as possible, Berven and Tiegs sampled the same number of trees as the 1971 study. The 2015 study also included approximately 150 frogs, toads, caecilians, lizards and snakes ? representing about 25 species ? which is comparable to the 1971 study, Berven said. An unexpected analysis of the study is to see the effectiveness of Limoncocha and its effect on the species population.
‘We sampled the same forest and presumably, in many cases, the same trees,? said Berven. ‘I can say this because we were in the same area and we are talking about trees that are very old. GPS did not exist (in 1971), but now we have GPS coordinates for all 180 trees we sampled.?
While results from the two studies have yet to be compared in detail, early indications are that biodiversity in the area remains intact.
Berven insists this is encouraging because rain forests worldwide have experienced dramatic changes over the past four decades. The area surrounding the study site hasn’t been immune to these changes.
Development is not the only threat to biodiversity in the tropics. Chytrid Fungus, a disease responsible for the mass extinction of amphibians around the globe, has been found in Ecuador.
As part of their research, Tiegs and Berven will have the amphibian specimens they collected screened for the disease and housed in a museum in Quito, Ecuador.
Berven moved to Lake Orion in 1985 and began teaching at Oakland University in 1980. He teaches four courses at OU which include Vertebrate Zoology and Scientific Inquiry and Communication.
He’s also been monitoring a single population of wood frogs for the past 12 years in an attempt to determine factors in year-to-year fluctuations in population.