Field Equipment Donation

Tomas and I would like to thank Save the Manatee Club for an amazing donation of a trolling motor, GPS and 4 life jackets to be used for manatee surveys at newly created Tocc Tocc Reserve in northern Senegal, the first reserve created specifically for the West African Manatee. Tomas has worked very hard over the past few years with the local community and the government of Senegal to get the reserve created. The area is a small lagoon on the western side of Lac de Guiers, a huge lake that provides drinking water for the capital city of Dakar and for local agriculture. Tomas saw his first West African manatees there several years ago, and realized that this quiet section of the lake where manatees are now often observed would be a great place to establish a sanctuary, and hopefully someday an education center. The reserve is also important habitat for the relatively rare Adanson's Mud Turtle (Pelusios adansoni) and many species of waterbirds and fish.

Last summer a university student worked at the reserve conducting manatee surveys (he had 7 sightings) and interviewing members of the local community about manatees. This equipment is vital for further surveys and will provide greater safety and data accuracy. We hope to establish a database of year round sightings, organize a clean up of derelict fishing nets and hopefully tag manatees here to learn more about their habitat use patterns in the lake and the adjacent Senegal River. We are incredibly honored that Save the Manatee Club supports this work!

A view of Tocc Tocc Reserve, water lily paradise. So far I've documented 10 species of known manatee food plants there.

In the Genetics Lab

While I've been silent on my blog I've been busy working in a genetics laboratory in Gainesville, Florida. It's been really exciting to get going on the analysis of the samples I've collected in Africa over the past 4 years! Although I'm more of an outdoor person, and working with delicate glassware and pipetting minuscule quantities into test tubes is not my forte, I'm really enjoying it and learning alot. It will be very interesting to see what can be learned about West African manatees in different countries and regions across their huge range. Hopefully we'll be able to tell how closely populations are related (or not), which then can be used by biologists and managers to address conservation issues.

This is the first time I've done any genetics since the 1980's, so I spent the first week getting up to speed and learning the different techniques I need to analyze manatee tissue and bone samples. I'm very lucky to be working with two manatee genetics experts from the U.S. Geological Survey, Maggie and Bob. Two other women who work in the lab, Gaia and Teresa, have been wonderful, patient teachers as well!

Happy faces in the lab: Teresa, Maggie and Gaia

The lab equipment seemed daunting at first (mostly because it is all very expensive and delicate!) but my comfort level has greatly improved in the last few weeks.
So to start, we take a small piece of manatee tissue that has been collected and preserved in the field. Using a very sterile procedure (because other DNA, including our own, can easily contaminate the sample) a piece about the size of a pea is cut and put in a vial with a chemical that breaks down the proteins and dissolves the tissue into individual cells.
The sample is gently rocked in a warm bath overnight to allow the chemical to break up the tissue... the warm bath part sounded good to me!
And then we add a series of chemicals to isolate the DNA. All of this involves using a pipette to mix extremely tiny amounts (measured in micro liters) into vials, centrifuge (spin) it and then remove a tiny layer of liquid off the top of the vial using a pipette. It definitely takes practice and a steady hand! Some of the chemicals we use are not friendly, so we have to work with our arms inside a fume hood (which has a fan to keep toxic chemicals from bothering us or getting into the lab). It's a bit awkward until you get used to it.
Once that's done, we add primers (specific, short DNA segments) to the DNA and it is amplified millions of times in a heating and cooling process (in a special machine) known as PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). The entire process takes about 12 hours from start to finish, there's lots of room for errors and at the end we hope there's some DNA in our vials! Definitely not as easy as it looks on CSI. To test the sample to see if we got DNA, we use an instrument called a nanophotometer (photo below), which shoots a beam of light through a tiny droplet of the sample and gives a general indication of whether or not DNA is present, although I've learned that other contaminants such as proteins can give a false reading. For all the samples that get good readings, we then do a purification procedure (more pipetting and vials!) to maximize the DNA.
Along the way we transfer the sample into many different vials, all of which need to be labelled with the correct ID number. It's alot like cooking, you follow the recipe but because of the quality of the ingredients, things don't always turn out the same way. Much of the manatee tissue I have is from carcasses that were badly decomposed or hunters who cooked manatee meat, all of which degrades the DNA. So I've had a few samples fail, but most are yielding something, and Maggie is helping me tweak the techniques to have the best possibility of getting DNA out of difficult samples.

After each procedure we run an electrophoresis gel which indicates if DNA is present (the orange bands). We mix gelatin up and pour it into a mold, the samples are inserted into tiny wells in the gel, an electric current passes through it and we can see the DNA bands in reference to a ladder (large group of orange bands at the top of the photo). The brightness of the orange band is an indicator of the quantity of DNA in the sample, so a fainter band has less DNA than a brighter one. We then photograph each gel to keep a record the results. Samples that have DNA are sequenced at the University of Florida to tell us what the DNA strand contains. They also have genotyping machines... here Bob is showing me one as he starts running a set of samples.

So we'll see what results I get! I have over 200 samples from 10 countries so far, and this is just the beginning... I've only run the first 10 samples so I have a long way to go!

Thanks to Sea World!

On Friday I received word that the Sea World Busch Gardens Conservation Fund has awarded me a grant to continue my manatee work in Africa. This is the second time in three years I've received funding from them, and I really appreciate the support at a time when the economy is slowly rebounding!!

At this time of year I focus on writing reports, analyzing data and preparing for the next field season in Africa. So while I seem very quiet, there is lots of work going on and I look forward to blogging about some results soon.

Disney's "Oceans"

This looks like a great new movie, and Disney (who funds some of my West African manatee work) will have a large display including my research at the premiere in Hollywood on Earth Day! Exciting... I'll post photos after the event.

Click here to see a trailer of the film!

Back in the USA

After another great fieldwork season in Senegal, Gabon and Ghana (7 months this year!) I arrived back in Florida last weekend. Now comes the other part of my job... writing reports, getting genetics samples exported from multiple African countries, analyzing and publishing data, and planning for next season. This summer I also hope to begin analysis of some of the genetics samples in Gainesville, which will definitely be a different kind of adventure for this field biologist who hasn't worked in a lab in years! There will be stories...

Senegal: A Few More Manatees

On Monday I visited the Zoology Department at Dakar University, where they have specimens of most of Senegal's species, including a partial manatee skeleton on display (no flippers). The curator wasn't there, so I'll contact him later for information about where it came from and how long ago it was acquired, but from the size of the skeleton, it appears to be a juvenile. Unfortunately it was falling apart a bit, but I give them credit for effort, because it takes alot of work to display a manatee skeletons in a lifelike way (3-D rather than flat on a table!). I'd like to get permission to take a sample for genetics analysis, as well as a sample of the earbone for age determination (still inside the skull, which is rare in a display specimen, they usually fall out).

The skeleton also included part of a mummified manatee tail (I'm not sure what's up with the mummified manatee parts in Senegal!).

Also with the skeleton is a brief general description about West African manatees, as well as this old postcard from the Royal Belgian Museum of Natural History. The manatee drawing is pretty good, although I got a chuckle out of the two baby manatees nestled on the beach at the right side of the drawing! Clearly the artist wasn't aware manatees are completely aquatic.

Also this week, a colleague at the Senegal River Development Authority forwarded the following photos of a manatee mating herd taken in the Senegal River near the town of Dagana in July 2008. Photos of manatees in Africa are rare enough, but to capture a mating herd is truly lucky! All the following photos are courtesy of Mr. Van Kutten of SAED.

For those of you not familiar with manatee mating behavior, usually a group of males (groups of up to 10 have been witnessed in FL) pursues a female, all attempting to mate with her. Not surprisingly, the female often tries to escape her suitors, who climb all over her and chase her until they are successful. All of this activity is usually very visible to any nearby human observer, because the manatees roll in the water with backs and tails flying. In Africa unfortunately this can also put manatees at risk for hunting; I know of at least one case where hunters went out and killed manatees in a mating herd, taking advantage of the manatees temporary ambivalence towards humans.

A male manatee climbing on top of a female (who is not visible in the muddy water)

Another shot of an amorous male... you can see a tiny piece of the female's back under his flipper

Several males and alittle bit of the back of the female is visible.

Noses in the river. Often the female tries to swim away from the males, so photos such as this (of the male in pursuit) are common for mating herds.

Thanks Columbus!!My longest term funder for West African Manatees, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium Conservation Fund, has renewed my grant for a third year in a row. I really appreciate this kind of continuing support as the work continues to grow across all the countries where West African manatees occur!

The Columbus Zoo has also invited me come and give a presentation on my African manatee work once I return to the USA, so I'm looking forward to that.