Action | Student News
Living a Double Life
For Six Months of the Year, Grad Student Luke Dollar Trades
Number Crunching in Durham for a Chance to Track the Elusive
Fossa in Madagascar
by Margaret L. Harris
Dressed in his Sunday best and fresh from singing tenor in
Duke's Chapel Choir, Luke Dollar doesn't look much like a
field biologist. The floppy fringe of hair around his clean-shaven
face is neatly combed, he doesn't exude strange jungle odors,
and nothing about his amiable grin suggests tropical diseases,
pith helmets, or man-eating crocodiles.
But Dollar, it seems, lives a double life. When the doctoral
student in ecology is in Durham, work with adviser Stuart
Pimm in the Nicholas School of the Environment
and Earth Sciences means chugging through data and sipping
wine on Sunday afternoons with the rest of Pimm's group -
a tight-knit crew he lovingly calls "The Family."
For six months of the year, though, Dollar's life takes him
to Madagascar, an island off the coast of southern Africa
and home to some of the strangest and least-understood animals
on Earth. At the field station he and Pimm established in
the Ankarafantsika dry forest, Dollar is principal investigator
for several projects, including a groundbreaking study of
Madagascar's largest predator and a systematic survey of Malagasy
conservation efforts. It's a world away from Durham, and by
the time he reaches the station, Dollar's ties and fine food
are long gone, traded for wildlife-themed t-shirts and a steady
diet of rice and beans.
Not that he's complaining. Dollar estimates he has traveled
to Madagascar "10 or 11 times," and he relishes
each opportunity to step outside the Western mainstream.
"Living there teaches you what you really need to survive,
to be happy," he said. "It's not things-based. We
take a lot for granted."
Dollar, a 1995 Duke graduate, made his first trip to the
island nation in the Indian Ocean when he was still an undergraduate.
He spent the summer before his senior year working on a Duke
Primate Center project in the southeastern Ranomafana
rain forest. On that trip, he studied lemurs - cuddly vegetarian
ancestors of monkeys and apes. But he found his true calling
after a mysterious signal from a long-dead transmitting collar
led him to wisps of lemur fur, a mangled radio collar, and
very little else.
The collar-chomping culprit, his Malagasy guide explained
in hushed tones, was a fossa (pronounced FOO-sa), Madagascar's
largest predator. Pound-for-pound, the elusive, bobcat-sized
fossa is among the world's fiercest creatures. At the end
of the dry season when prey is in short supply, Dollar says,
they've been known to "do really amazing stuff,"
including making successful solo attacks on cows and pigs.
For decades after its discovery, though, the elusive fossa
remained a scientific mystery. Even its place in the animal
kingdom had to be pencilled in. The fossa looks something
like a cat-dog hybrid, with its long tail, pointed snout and
sharp claws; and DNA evidence linking it to the mongoose family
was a long time coming.
page 1 | 2
| 3 | 4
|
