{"id":72485,"date":"2024-06-13T13:52:25","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T20:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=72485"},"modified":"2024-06-13T13:52:32","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T20:52:32","slug":"darwin-200","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/darwin-200\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU ecologist joins Darwin-inspired expedition in Polynesia"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month, an NAU professor is retracing Charles Darwin\u2019s famous multi-continent voyage in the name of science.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jut Wynne<\/span><\/b>, an assistant research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, will spend the month of June aboard a 1917 tallship much like Darwin\u2019s HMS Beagle, which set sail nearly 200 years ago. He\u2019ll join one short leg of the global expedition, traveling across the Pacific Ocean from Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, to Mangareva, the easternmost\u00a0 island of French Polynesia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Map<\/a>
Wynne will travel from Rapa Nui to Mangareva in the Pacific Ocean.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like others on the <\/span>Darwin200 expedition<\/span><\/a>, Wynne is on board to conduct the kind of ecological\u00a0 research the iconic English naturalist would have loved to read about: He\u2019s setting out to test his own hypothesis as to whether ancient Polynesians accidentally transplanted\u00a0 insects to Rapa Nui and other parts of eastern Polynesia via canoe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>\u201cWhen we go on a car camping trip, we want to take all of the creature comforts with us,\u201d Wynne said. \u201cWell, for the ancient Polynesians, those creature comforts were plants. They didn\u2019t just bring plants for food; they also brought plants for medicinal purposes and for making nets and\u00a0 rope. So when they traveled by their large double-hulled voyaging canoe, they would take gourds with saplings, and they would introduce them to each island they went to as they moved across Polynesia. Through this process, they\u2019d introduce not only new plants but also new bugs.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wynne believes at least three species of insects that are unique to eastern Polynesia were introduced via canoe thousands of years ago, and he wouldn\u2019t be surprised to learn there are even more \u201ccanoe bugs.\u201d To find out if he\u2019s right, the biologist will travel to some of the most remote islands in eastern Polynesia. There, he will study coastal and cave habitats Darwin opined about in his writings to look for these unique species. Along the way, he\u2019ll also monitor the Pacific waters for rafting terrestrial arthropods, aerial plankton and airborne spiders.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jut<\/a>
On a previous trip to Rapa Nui, Wynne rappelled down an oceanside cliff to access patches of native plants. Photo courtesy of Drew Bristow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This isn\u2019t Wynne\u2019s first time visiting Rapa Nui. He\u2019s traveled to the isolated island five other times to study cave-dwelling insects that exist nowhere else in the world\u2014sometimes while rappelling down steep coastal cliff faces.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wynne said he\u2019s one of few biologists studying the insect diversity of eastern Polynesian islands\u2014and the only scientist studying them by tall ship.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMore than half of Rapa Nui\u2019s native species have not been observed since they were first described on the island,\u201d Wynne said. \u201cFrom what I can discern, the last entomological investigation of Mangareva was in the 1930s. And it appears the last entomological study on the Pitcairn Islands was in the early 1990s. I\u2019ll be sampling cave and coastal habitats to search for potential \u2018canoe bugs\u2019 and other native species that may be new to science.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Wynne\u2019s work won\u2019t just add new information to the scientific literature. It may also help identify which of these islands\u2019 insect species are endangered and in need of support.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhile islands constitute about 7% of the Earth’s landmass, they support nearly 20% of the planet’s diversity,\u201d Wynne said. \u201cEqually as important, nearly 50% of the species identified as threatened or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature are endemic to islands. Part of my work will involve collecting data to assess the IUCN Red List status for several of the endemic species that colleagues and I discovered on Rapa Nui in the early 2000s.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The adventure-seeking scholar returns to Flagstaff in July, but not for long: in the fall, he\u2019ll travel to Bhutan to study how tigers, leopards and other animals use caves.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month, an NAU professor is retracing Charles Darwin\u2019s famous multi-continent voyage in the name of science. Jut Wynne, an assistant research professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, will spend the month of June aboard a 1917 tallship much like Darwin\u2019s HMS Beagle, which set sail nearly 200 years ago. He\u2019ll join one short…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":72486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}