I celebrated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday on Rota, a beautiful small island (85 square kilometers) of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. Rota is a fine place to think about evolution, speciation, and also conservation. This is because Rota is home to several endemic species. The Mariana Crow (Corvus kubaryi) previously inhabited Guam but fell victim to the Brown Tree Snake and is now consider critically endangered on Rota with at most 150 individuals. The Rota White-Eye (Zosterops rotensis) divereged from the more common Bridled White-Eye (Zosterops conspicillatus) which inhabits neighboring islands, some of which can been seen from Rota on a clear day. Also the Mariana Fruit Bat (Pteropus mariannus) has been hunted to extinction on other islands and is at risk of going extinct on Rota as well. When I think about the conservation of these rare species I can't help the think about the evolutionary forces that created these unique populations. Because when we talk about the conservation of a species we are talking about preserving a piece of evolutionary history--collections of beautifly crafted genes sculpted (and still being improved upon) by the natural environment they live in. In the Origin of Species Darwin says: "How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods". I think it is clear from this that if Darwin were alive today he would be an ardent conservationist!
The natural history that Darwin (and Wallace as well) observed on islands was critical for their formation of their theories of evolution. The combination of unique ecological scenarios and isolation makes islands supreme for the creation of new species. But island species also suffer from small population sizes and, again, unique ecological scenarios which make them vulnerable to extinctions. Something like 80% of avian extinctions in recent times were island species. In this modern age of extinction I think islands are a still a great place to get excited about evolution, but perhaps more important for encouraging conservation!
I have had the great pleasure to hang out with Ken Levenstein and Julia Boland. Ken is a postdoc from the University of Washington who is currently studying the Mariana Crow and the Rota White-Eye. He did his PhD in the Galapagos and stayed at Darwin's camp site. Julia is a biologists with the Division of Fish and Wildlife studying the Mariana Fruit Bat, and is working to reduce poaching on the island. It is refreshing to meet people out in this isolated world in the Pacific who are thinking about ecology and evolution and are out here trying to preserve some of evolution's beautiful creations. Darwin would be happy to see it.
Happy Birthday
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I can't think of a more appropriate place to reflect on the history of evolution, and the fact that this isolated line of islands rolled out like pebbles on the beach is not among the most famous for evolution is also important. The same forces that have mad the Galapagos Islands and the Islands surrounding Wallace's line so famous for the study of evolution have been quietly at work here, and some of these lesser known laboratories for evolution are perhaps even more vulnerable, precisely because they are not often in the spotlight. Hats off to everyone working to change that situation.
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