Talk on Madagascar

Talk about Madagascar’s open biomes

I was recently visiting colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and gave a seminar to their Evolution Seminar Series. The seminar is attached to an undergraduate class designed to demonstrate different applications and careers in science. I think that is a good idea and would like to see it replicated at other institutions.

The talk was recorded and is available on youtube. I covered some previous research on mouse lemurs and upcoming work on Malagasy grasses. It was a talk I wanted to give for a long time, as rather than focusing on the methodological advances, I focused on telling a story about natural history and people. Although a preprint mentioned in the talk discussed some technical details of population genetic analyses in polyploids, it is important to stay focused on the ultimate application and policy goals of these data and analyses.

There is a sobering note though. The Ankafobe protected area was a topic of focus at times for both the work on lemurs and grasses. There was a very destructive fire at the site in October of 2022. The Missouri Botanic Gardens, which manages the protected area, has plans for restoration, but it can be difficult to predict success of reforestation programs. Something I try to communicate in the talk is that if we want to restore and protect forests, then the open vegetation and grasses need to be managed appropriately too.