Evolutionary Expedition Scales Borneo's Highest Peak

摘要

Following in the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, this week 40 Dutch and Malaysian scientists will ascend Borneo's 4000-meter Mount Kinabalu-the tallest peak in Southeast Asia-to study the region's world-famous biodiversity. Menno Schilthuizen of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, has spent 7 years documenting unknown species in the region, such as the land snail Everettia layanglayang (pictured above). On this expedition, he and his colleagues will spend 2 weeks collecting DNA from plants, animals, and fungi from both the mountaintop and surrounding lowlands with the goal of comparing closely related species from the two environments. They hope to determine which species on Mount Kinabalu are ancient relics from cooler times, and which recently moved from the hot, humid lowlands to the summit's alpine climate. Starting with Wallace, "there is a long history of research on evolution [on the mountain]," Schilthuizen says. "But no one has taken a large-scale approach."