Stony Brook University PhD candidate Elise Lauterbur spent the day in the small unprotected rainforest of Ambatolahidimy  on Jan. 8, 2016 to collect samples for her research on the three species of bamboo lemurs that are found in Madagascar.

Lauterbur has been studying bamboo lemurs under Patricia Wright, PhD, and Liliana Dávalos, PhD, for two years.

“My research is to find out how bamboo lemurs tolerate the very large amounts of cyanide that’s naturally found in the bamboo they eat,” Lauterbur explained. “The Golden Bamboo Lemur and the Greater Bamboo Lemur have both been shown to ingest very large amounts of cyanide. In the case of the Golden Bamboo Lemur, it’s at least twelve times the amount of cyanide that would kill any other mammal of a similar size,” she continued. “We don’t know how they manage to survive this, and that’s what my research is to find out.”

In order to conduct this research, Lauterbur needs to collect urine samples from as many individual bamboo lemurs as possible. Analysis of the urine may reveal some biological processes that let the lemurs survive the consumption of cyanide.

To collect these samples, Lauterbur is accompanied into the forest by Centre ValBio research technicians Velo and Jean Claude to find the lemurs. The two guides have been observing the lemurs in this forest frequently, so they know where the groups are normally found. They can also track down the lemurs by looking for “lemur trash,” which is the part of the bamboo that the lemurs discard after eating. Once they locate the group of Golden Bamboo Lemurs sleeping in a tree, Lauterbur and her intern, Scott Kahl, sit down and wait for the lemurs to wake up.

After a few hours, the lemurs wake up, and the team follows them deeper into the forest and observes their behaviors. Kahl, a senior biology major at Stony Brook University, is looking for one behavior in particular: eating dirt.  “It’s possible that they would be eating it [the dirt] for some kind of nutritional value for dealing with the cyanide in the bamboo,” Kahl explains.

Lauterbur places herself underneath the lemur with a funnel and tube apparatus and waits to catch its urine. The sample has to be frozen as soon as possible so she can transport it back to her lab in the United States for analysis.

Lauterbur has collected 16 samples during the past two weeks, and she is staying at CVB until March.

 

Senior biology student Joe Babinski of Stony Brook University met with three traditional healers from the area surrounding Centre ValBio on Jan. 7, 2016. Babinski is meeting with these healers to gather information for his internship project.

“My project is a comparison of the type of care that the Malagasy people are getting from the traditional healers and from the Western Health Team that operates out of the center,” Babinski explains, “it seems to me that depending on what type of illness they have, people will choose either the health team or a traditional healer.” “So far I have spoken with three or four traditional healers and asked them questions about the types of illness they see, the way they treat those illnesses, and the training that they’ve gotten,” he continued.

To gather information, Babinski sets out each morning with CVB Biodiversity Assistant Dina Heriala as his guide, and he attends arranged meetings with traditional healers. The first stop on this day’s journey was at a tiny house down the road from the town of Ranomafana to meet a midwife.

The 57-year-old woman sat on the floor of her home with a baby in her lap as the children of the village crowded at the door to catch a glimpse of the strange visitors. Through Babinski’s questions and Heriala’s translations, the midwife explained how she learned her skills through her grandmother, and named a few plants that she uses for her treatments.

After saying thank you and goodbye, Heriala lead Babinski to the home of another midwife who lives in a village directly above Ranomafana. This midwife explained that she has been practicing for 16 years, and that she works closely with the hospital in town. Babinski was elated to hear this information. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for,” he exclaimed after the interview, “some kind of relationship.”

The duo then descended back into town to meet a healer that specializes in burns and sore throats. At his small storefront in Ranomafana, he explained how he used ginger as a treatment for many ailments, and occasionally gave his patients Amoxicillin, which is a western antibiotic. With this new information, Babinski speculated that “traditional healers play an important cultural role, and fulfill a medical role when necessary, but those who are close enough [to the hospital] and can afford it prefer Western medicine.”

Babinski still has to continue his research by joining the traveling medical team for their next expedition on Jan. 14, but so far he believes that “there seems to be three factors for choosing a healer: proximity, cost, and comfort.”