JEANNETTE GOON The Star 26 Oct 14;
They are beautiful and familiar, but their diversity and abundance are also indicators of environmental health. These factors make butterflies ideal ‘ambassadors’ in efforts to educate the public about the importance of biodiversity to the survival of the planet.
MALAYSIA is one of 17 megadiverse countries identified by Conservation International.
About 20% of the world’s animal species are thought to be found here. However, this is not something most Malaysians view as a priority or even with interest, which is why a senior lecturer from Universiti Malaya (UM) decided to embark on the School Butterfly Project.
Dr John James Wilson, who is a senior lecturer in ecology and biodiversity at the Institute of Biological Sciences, is originally from the United Kingdom but has lived in Malaysia for two years.
“In my short time in Malaysia, I have noticed that Malaysians are a bit ambivalent about the immense diversity and biological richness of their country,” said Wilson, who is also the assistant curator of the Museum of Zoology at the UM campus.
“The School Butterfly Project came out of this concern – that we need to educate the next generation to care about their environment and the wildlife they share their country with.”
The funding for the project comes from UMCares, the Community and Sustainability Centre at UM, which offers seed funding for community engagement programmes.
“I took the opportunity to start the School Butterfly Project,” he said, explaining that it was basically using butterflies as “ambassadors for wildlife”.
Under the project, Wilson and his team will go to five primary schools in five different states to teach the pupils about butterflies and, by extension, about the environment.
“(We will) teach the children how to take non-lethal DNA samples and how the diversity of butterflies can be used to indicate changing environments.
“Butterflies can be considered ‘bioindicators’ as their diversity and abundance can indicate how good an area is, in terms of its richness of wildlife,” he said.
Wilson said that the general public often consider insects as tough, resilient, overwhelmingly abundant vectors of diseases or pests.
However, insects are actually very sensitive to small changes in seasons and climate.
“But we have very little clues as to exactly how they will respond to these changes,” said Wilson.
“Most people, when thinking about climate change think about melting polar ice caps, but actually studies have shown that the tropics are the parts of the world that are going to feel the impact of climate change first.
“If insect populations are severely affected by climate change, which will manifest like seasonal changes but much more severe, this will have a huge impact on our lives.
“Insects play a crucial role in ecosystems as consumers of plants and detritus. They then provide food for the next tropic levels such as birds and small mammals.
“Insects are also incredibly important pollinators, sustaining the production of our food plants,” he said.
With the School Butterfly Project, pupils will get the opportunity to play a role in providing samples to the university.
They will go out four different times a year to collect butterfly samples and send the tissue samples, in the form of legs, to the researchers at UM.
“We will use DNA barcoding to identify the butterflies and measure the diversity at each school and how it changes over the year,” said Wilson.
When the team made its first round of school visits, they brought butterfly catching “kits” with them – a box containing supplies for the pupils to make nets, collect and keep samples.
Each box contains tweezers, string, clothes hangers and net fabric (for making butterfly nets), marker pens, tape, tubes and prepaid envelopes (to send samples back to UM). UM also loans a camera to the schools.
Wilson said that, besides being bioindicators, butterflies were chosen because they are well-known insects and the “DNA barcode library” is established.
He added that there was always a possibility of finding a new species and one of these primary school pupils may even be able to do so.
“We will give them a list of the species that they find,” he said.
He added that they hope to increase the number of schools involved next year and would welcome support and contributions from other individuals and organisations.
“Contributions could be in the form of the contents of the box or a camera on loan,” said Wilson.
(The cost for the items in the box, as well as the fee needed for net sewing is RM152.)
As there is a lab fee required for the barcoding procedure, Wilson said that the project would cost about RM2,500 for one school.
One of the schools taking part is SJK(C) Ting Hwa in Malacca and science teacher Jisming See Shi Wei believes that this project will be a valuable experience for her pupils.
“Citizen science is still something new in Malaysia. As educators, we support any kind of educational activity for children,” she said, adding that the project was a good opportunity for the pupils to get involved in actual scientific research.
“Furthermore, the topic is familiar to them. It is about environmental awareness and wildlife, and I believe the butterflies will definitely attract their attention.”
She added that the children of today would be an influence on the environment in the future.
“It is very important to promote their interests through official and non-official education. Besides instilling a sense of responsibility towards the environment, this project provides schoolchildren with a real sense of discovery, and enhances the learning experience in biology,” she said.
The first sampling is scheduled to happen later this month and, according to Jisming, the pupils are already impatient to begin.
“They keep asking when the sampling day is,” she said.
Even though the pupils have not begun the sampling process, they are already able to remember and point out butterflies based on the training session that was conducted.
While the DNA barcoding portion of the research would not be possible for members of the public, capturing and documenting butterflies is doable.
“The insects are quite fragile though, “ cautioned Wilson, “so you shouldn’t just go out and randomly catch them.”
He advised those interested to go to the School Butterfly Project Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/SchoolButterflyProject ) for tutorials on catching and sampling the insects.
Wilson said that UM will begin mass monitoring insect diversity at UM field stations across the peninsula from Johor to Kelantan over the course of an entire year.
“Once we have this data on how insect diversity is affected by climate and seasons, we’ll be better positioned to understand and predict the effect of global climate change on our tropical ecosystems,” he said.
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