A trek in the wild
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| A RISKY VENTURE • Terry Demos (BA ‘95, BS ‘95) (front row, left) and four researchers from the Centre de Recherche en Sciences Naturelles in Lwiro, along with four federal army soldiers (at right, in the green jackets), at a federal army checkpoint in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are no roads in this region, and anyone entering or exiting is required to get permission. Due to security risks (neighboring regions of the Itombwe Mountains are under the control of armed rebel groups), this was the first research trip taken beyond the vicinity of the Lwiro research station. |
What did you do last summer ? Terry Demos (BA ’95, BS ’95) went on a research expedition to the remote wilderness of east Africa. The evolutionary biologist, along with a team of American and African scientists, collected scores of small mammals in a rainforest in the Itombwe Mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Detailing the biodiversity at 11,000 feet turned out to be a risky venture. His research team was held up by roving militiamen, who apprehended members of his party at gunpoint, and only released them after receiving money.
“At dusk one day, three guys showed up with automatic weapons,” he recalls. “They interrogated some of our guys for two hours, and then marched off. I waspreparing specimens and didn’t move. I expected the worst. We all agreed to leave the next morning.”
The frightening incident cut short the research, but not before Demos and his team had found three shrews and a mouse that they believe are new species. He also brought back a broad collection of specimens whose DNA will be analyzed to discern their evolutionary history. It will serve as data for his study to determine if the high-altitude forest was a refuge for mammals during previous epochs of climate change. “We think the species would have retreated to these mountains, on the edge of the Congo River basin,” Demos says.
The Hills are Alive
The collection will also highlight the rich diversity in the Itombwe region, a 2,500-square-mile area under development pressure by farming, cattle grazing, logging, and the extraction of coltan, a mineral used in cell phones around the world. The expedition team, which included 20 porters, trekked four days to reach the intact forest, which was last studied by naturalists in 1908. Results of the study will be used by advocacy groups, such as Conservation nternational, which lobbies governments to preserve pristine habitats teeming with wildlife.
“This will help show the biological importance of these mountains,” says Demos, a doctoral student at City University of New York’s Queens College. “These are very old forests, and it’s a critically threatened area. Not all the forests will be saved, but we need to find the most diverse and try to set some of that aside.”
A Change of Plans
Demos didn’t intend to become a biologist when he started at Loyola in the early 1990s. He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with his life. After studying for two years at the University of Wisconsin, he had moved to Chicago. He took courses part time at Loyola, majoring in history, which he figured would lead him to law school. His history studies, however, led him to books about the lives of 19thcentury naturalists like Alfred Russel Wallace, a British scientist and father of biogeography, who traveled through the Indonesian islands collecting more than 125,000 specimens for his research into the theory of natural selection. Such tales piqued Demos’s interest, who, as a child, collected turtles, crayfish, frogs, and butterflies. He took some biology courses at Loyola and soon discovered his childhood passion for collecting animals in the wild
could be tapped if he devoted himself to a career in science.
Demos graduated with degrees in history and biology in 1995 and later returned to Loyola to take a graduate course in evolutionary biology. The professor, Terry Grande, PhD, introduced him to researchers at Chicago’s Field Museum and encouraged him to pursue a graduate degree in biology.
“There’s a childlike innocence about Terry when he’s involved in a project,” Grande says. “He just goes and goes, and there’s no stopping him.” The Field Museum opened up a new world to the fledgling biologist. There, he volunteered with the museum’s collection manager, learning new ways to trap specimens and prepare them for the museum’s internationally renowned collection. That summer, Demos headed to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness in northern Minnesota with his own traps to collect small mammals like moles, squirrels, mice, and shrews. Those specimens are among an estimated 2,700 he has prepared and given to the Field Museum.
Demos’s studies at Loyola and the Field Museum also linked him to biologists at UIC, where he later earned a master’s degree. He first journeyed to Africa in 2006 for field research in Kenya, followed by a trip to Malawi in 2007. Next year he is planning on carrying out small mammal surveys on several of Kenya’s volcanic peaks. “There are still some amazing rainforests in Kenya, but those, without formal conservation protection, are rapidly disappearing” he says.
The Naming of the Shrew
While he plans his next expedition, Demos will also be studying the specimens he collected last summer, including what he believes are four new species of mammals, which he is in the midst of working with the Field Museum to describe. Those discoveries have provided Demos with an opportunity reserved for a privileged group of biologists: he gets to name the species. But what will he name them?
It is considered poor form for a biologist to name a species for himself. Some come up with names related to the animal’s characteristics or the region where it lives. In 2008, one named a spider for his favorite rock star, Neil Young. But there’s a growing movement among scientists to auction off the naming rights to wealthy patrons in order to fund further research. “It costs a lot to carry out surveys in endangered areas,” says Demos. An auction, says Demos, could support the work he and others believe is essential to expand our understanding of the world and protect vanishing habitats.