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ISSUE 17 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2016
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 IMPERIALS MRes COURSE


This January saw the first group of Imperial College London's Tropical Forest Ecology MRes course. The group spent most of their time out at Maliau but had a few busy days at SAFE camp fishing in our streams. The course was lots of fun for all and a fair bit of hard work for the students and we look forward to the company of a few of the students as they stay on to complete their field work for their main projects.


 

GUNUNG TAMBUKU

Gunung Tambuku in the VJR, known previously to some SAFErs as Mount Ewers, had a set of micro climate sensors set at intervals to the summit on an elevation gradient. These needed to be brought in and a small band of intrepid researchers chose Chinese New Year weekend to embark on the arduous but fulfilling trek to camp on the summit. Honing our parang and GPS skills we climbed to the awesome peak and while enjoying our much deserved and appreciated packed lunch were met with a heinous tropical downpour – the first day of proper rain at the SAFE experimental area for almost a month. Our luck improved as the storm only lasted a while and we were treated to a beautiful sunset and sunrise.



 

THE BALI GIRDLING CAMPAIGN

 
This is a BALI led project taking advantage of the fact that one of Terhi’s long term carbon plots is scheduled for conversion to oil palm. The aim is to investigate how carbon fixed in the forest canopy is transported to below ground bio mass and from there is transported to the soil. In addition to tracking carbon movement, the use of girdling (scoring a ring around the bark of the tree, i.e. cutting of water and nutrients above the line - which results in the death of the tree) will allow us to investigate the feedback processes that occur when forest canopy experiences a carbon imbalance. This is the first time that large scale girdling has been applied at this level in the tropics. Measurements in both girdling and control plots will track how canopy leaf functions and soil respiration respond after the girdling event. Hopefully we will see how girdling will impact both canopy level processes and below ground respiration. We completed the girdling of all the trees by Chinese New Year and are now deep in the process of monitoring how the system will respond. At the end of experiment we will have the opportunity to destructively sample trees before logging and conversion to oil palm to collect detailed anatomy and wood traits. This will provide valuable data on trees which have been monitored for growth and stem respiration for years.

NEW TOILETS AND SHOWERS

There have been grumblings about the basic toilet and showers at SAFE. This will now be a thing of the past as we are currently installing a new and improved toilet block. The finished product will include three toilets and three showers and comes replete with two outdoor basins for hand washing!



  
                                                

Resident Researchers & Volunteers


ALEX CHEESMAN

Alex is at SAFE primarily to help with the sap flow & functional trait work associated with the girdling experiment. He is a post doc at James Cook university based in Cairns and prior to the last three years in Cairns, Alex worked with the Smithsonian Institution in Panama investigating thermal tolerance and acclimation in tropical trees.
 
MUHAMMAD FIRDAUS ABDUL KARIM


Fert is currently a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen and supervised by Proff. Liz Baggs, established chair of British soil science society and Dr. Nicholas Morley.  He is also a Malaysian government scholarship holder, bonded with the University of Malaysia Kelantan. He is working at SAFE on the girdling project and looks at effect of girdling on the nitrogen cycle using stable isotopes. His experiment is to look at how plants influence green house gas emmissions, specifically looking at the coupling of Carbon & Nitrogen in the soil.
LIZZIE THE LICOR QUEEN

Lizzie is a BALI technician and research assistant and is known at camp as the LICOR queen. Putting in the hard yards at the tower plot she is overseeing the RAs and maintaining and monitoring the equipment that is measuring carbon fluxes during the girdling experiment and is known by many who work with her as a kind and hard working queen. 

New Projects
Several students from Imperial College London's Tropical Forest Ecology Course will be conducting projects at SAFE over the coming months. These include:
Imperial College's new PhD student, Nichar Gregory will be beginning to collect data on mosquito vectors.
Shane Morris will collecting data on Whitehead's Rat populations for his Masters in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation.
Noel Juvigny-Khenafou will be collecting data on invertebrate biomass and comparing this to samples from previous year's collections.
Emma Dobinson will looking at the diets of freshwater fish over the land use gradient.
For more information on the new projects take a look at the SAFE website.

Publications
Gray et al. (2016) Are riparian forest reserves sources of invertebrate biodiversity spillover and associated ecosystem functions in oil palm landscapes? Biological Conservation 194: 176–183

Loveridge et al. (2016) Movement Behavior of Native and Invasive Small Mammals Shows Logging May Facilitate Invasion in a Tropical Rain Forest. Biotropica

Pfeifer et al. (2016) Mapping the structure of Borneo's tropical forests across a degradation gradient. Remote Sensing of Environment 176: 84–97

NERC Project Research Assistants

ZUL AND NOY
RAIZUL BIN SAHAMIN

Zul is from Kampung Sook near Keningau in central Sabah and is with the BALI group helping out with the traits campaign and other general RA duties. Before SAFE he was planting trees at the Sapulut forest development and he has a passion for fishing, ping pong and of course, karaoke.



 
ARNOLD JAMES

Arnold, otherwise known as Noy, is from Kampung Tampinau, Lahad Datu near Danum Valley. During  2007 he was working with the Borneo Sun Bear and Bearded Pig projects at Danum with Wong Siew Tie. In 2008 he moved to Peninsular Malaysia with FRIM under UNDP and worked all over the peninsular monitoring wildlife movements. In 2010 he again moved back to Sabah and worked in the 50 hectare plot at Danum. He is now under LOMBOK. He has a deep interest in mammals and one of the more unique singing voices at SAFE camp. 

Species profiles - by Phil Chapman

Photograph by Rajeev Pillay
 

 

 

BORNEAN FALCONET (Microhierax litifrons)


       Bornean wildlife is full of superlatives: the islands have the world’s tallest tropical tree, the world’s highest diversity of plant species per unit area, the world’s largest woodpecker, the world’s smallest elephants, the world’s largest venomous snake, and numerous other biggest- or smallest-ever animals and plants.
Perhaps a slightly less-known example is the diminutive Bornean or White-Fronted Falconet, which is endemic to Sabah, and has a good claim to be the world’s smallest bird of prey (although two other Microhierax species run it close in size and weight). This raptor is a mere 15cm (6 inches) long and weighs around 40g on average.  In other words, the Falconet is of comparable dimensions to the familiar House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), and no more than 25% heavier.
What, might you ask, is the evolutionary point of being so tiny?  What could possibly be the niche for such a tiny raptor? Well, healthy Bornean forests are characterised by a preponderance of huge, floaty and very unmanoeuvrable butterflies which can often be seen gliding gracefully through clearings or flapping limply around canopy flowers. A mid-storey and canopy hunter, the energetic Falconet feeds mostly on these sluggish targets (which might reach over half its own dimensions), as well as other insects, and occasionally the tiniest sunbirds and geckos (which must represent quite a formidable challenge to tackle!). Nesting in discarded holes of heftier birds such as barbets or woodpeckers, the Falconet is probably a cooperative breeder (this has been observed in the Collared Falconet M.  caerulescens), and is generally seen in family groups.

 


PLAIN PYGMY SQUIRREL
  (Exilisciurus exilis)

 

Fieldworkers in the office-cum-laboratory at the heart of SAFE camp are usually intensely concentrated on whatever paper they’re reading, beating their head on a wall while battling some arcane statistical analysis, or cursing the inoperative wifi. However, the arrival of a Plain Pygmy Squirrel on the Macaranga tree just outside tempts most people to procrastination with cameras and cooing.
This minute endemic mammal is not just Borneo’s smallest squirrel, it’s one of the smallest of all the terrestrial mammals (besides bats). Basically a fully-formed squirrel in miniature, the Plain Pygmy Squirrel lives an almost entirely arboreal lifestyle, foraging chiefly on trunks and branches in the tangled understorey of the logged forest. Its minute weight (12-26 grammes) allows it to fill a unique niche by crawling out along the thinnest vines and up saplings and slender herby stems, reach into small trunk holes and generally nose its way into tiny places that rats, larger squirrels and treeshrews simply can’t reach. Perhaps its only vertebrate competitors are the climbing mice and the similarly tiny Rufous Piculet, a minute woodpecker.
Its diet is something of an enigma, (for one thing this species is nigh-on impossible to trap) although like most Bornean understorey squirrels the Pygmy Squirrel is somewhat of a generalist, gleaning invertebrates from small holes and under bark, gnawing on the bark itself, and crunching up whatever small seeds and nuts it can find. The species is probably territorial, as the individual(s) in camp can be seen motionless in an elevated position giving off a thin squeak and flicking its tail, a common, apparently territorial behaviour in larger species.
The life of such a tiny species must be fraught with peril. Pygmy Squirrels foraging in the understorey are small enough to be on the potential menu of much bulkier invertebrates such as tarantulas and centipedes, as well as snakes, other mammals, and a variety of predatory birds.
 


 
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