[Killietalk] RE: RE: Wild Collections Proposal

[BJ Turner <fishgen at vt_edu>]

> Lemme  rant too---why should  Matt have all the fun?:

1.  I gather that some people are poking fun at Nevin for  getting 
Malaria?  Whomever is doing that betrays a provincialism that , were 
I not a cynic, would be hard to believe.  I  got malaria in 1969 in 
the Yucatan. It was on the trip where Vlad Walters and I found 
Megupsilon for the first time, but by then that experience was many 
miles to the  north.  After two days of feeling feverish I became 
totally incompacitated, with fever spiking  three or four times a day 
and incredible dysentery-like symptoms.  By the 7th  day I could not 
get out of my hammock to take care of bodily necessities, and  I 
finally had to cut a hole in the  hammock---I won't be more graphic 
than that.  We  were about 50 KM outside of Progresso, but Vlad was 
afraid to leave me alone while he went into town to get more 
medicine---there were rumors of all sort s of bandits in the  area. 
Finally we traded 4 cartons of cigarettes to a passing truck driver 
for six or seven  atabrine  tablets, and  these knocked the disease 
down enough for me  to get into town and to an infirmary.  I spent 
another two weeks on my back, ultimately losing more than 40 lbs.  I 
did get back, but if circumstances were only slightly different I 
very likel ywould  not have survived.  I had at least three shorter 
attacks in  the ensuing four year period, but  then they gradually 
diminished and I haven't had any symptoms at all for more than 25 
years.  And just think:  I probably didn't have the severest form of 
malaria!   I was young and strong and very very lucky... Malaria is 
most definitely NOT a joke.

2.  If you're really going to do this collecting bit, I have a few suggestions:

a.  Focus on an area that has  a diverse  killifish fauna, so that 
the yield of fishes pleases the largest number of people.  I think it 
is a bad  idea to attempt to visit  an area just because a single 
species  of interest, no matter how beautiful, might be found there. 
Ideally, there should be some nonkillies that are worth having too.

b.  Count on making several visits at least.  "One shot" collecting 
seldom  does the trick.  For example, when  working with the goodeid 
fish Ilyodon in Rios Armeria and Coahuayana in the 1980's, we didn't 
really get a good  feeling for the  diversity that existed until the 
second or third trip.  One field trip acts as  a planning session for 
the next...  In our case, new roads were being  cut in  the  area, 
and many of these  provided  access to new localities.  One year, for 
example, we found that a road had been built that enabled us to get 
to the main Rio Coahuayana where it broadened downstream, and we 
fished that area for the first time.  In the first haul of the  seine 
we captured more representatives of a supposedly "rare" minnow, 
Algansea  aphania,  than had then existed in all  the world'smuseums, 
combined....  We found Allodontichthys tamazulae and hubbsi  in large 
numbers.  We already knew that Ilyodon  could be extremely abundant, 
but here they were so thick that Iactually feared for the integrity 
of the net...  And we found color morphs that we had never  seen 
before...lots  of them, and they changed our ideas of the kind of 
heterogeneity that existed within this river basin...

c.  Make sure that there is a major airport in the area or within a 
day's drive on  the local roads.  Ideally, an American consulate 
should also be in the same city as the airport,  but that may be too 
much to ask for.

d.  Makesure that there is at least one  person with you who speaks a 
language that local people can understand.  The importance of this 
cannot be  overemphasized.

e.  Make sure that several members of your collecting  party have 
valid collecting permits.  Display xerox copies of these permits 
prominently, but keep the originals safe and waterproof, and keep 
them to yourself.

f.  Have a great deal of money with you, divided into US currency and 
that of the country you are working in.  Keep the money dispersed 
among the members of the collecting party, and keep a goodly portion 
of it in plastic bags in places like a money belt and/or a neck pouch 
suspended with a light chain (a cloth rope can be easily cut).  The 
money is to minimize hassle when it comes up.  I have needed it to 
make informal gifts to border guards (between Tanzania and Kenya) and 
airline personnel.  I have also had to use it to "buy" a boarding 
pass  in  Dar-es-Salaam (we had already handed in our tickets and 
gotten boarding passes, but when the shift changed the new workers 
refused to recognize the old  boarding passes, and we had to buy ours 
all  over again) .  Keep your airtickets safely hidden (e-tickets are 
not  used in some more remote parts of the planet).    Don't  flash 
the cash...


I vote for Cameroun or the Central African Republic for Africa, and 
Paraguay for South America.



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--
*****************************************************************************************************************************
Bruce J. Turner
Dept. Biology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0406
(540)-231-7444 (V)
(540)-231-9307 (F)
fishgen at vt_edu
				http://www.biol.vt.edu/faculty/turner/


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