Species Seeker Sive Savannah

America to be bordered by both the devastating and irreversible, because science Q&A Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, is a and education are long-term efforts that must mosaic of ecosystems, including mountain be supported consistently.” ranges, deep jungle, rugged coasts and expan- The letter summarized the growing disen- Species seeker sive savannah. It is the second most biodiverse chantment among Colombian researchers nation in the world (behind neighbouring about the future of science there. As Enrique During his PhD Brazil) and, thanks in part to this natural labo- Forero, president of the Colombian Academy of at the University ratory, the country of 49 million people has Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences in Bogotá, of Minnesota in dozens of universities and institutes working points out, federal funding is decreasing fur- Minneapolis, Juan on home-grown science, ranging from the ther. “Support from the government is not very Fernando Díaz International Center for Tropical Agriculture acceptable. It’s very, very, very low and it seems Nieto was part in Cauca Valley to the natural and physical sci- to be going down every year,” he says. of an expedition ence laboratories of Bogotá’s largest universities M. MARTÍNEZ-CERÓN JUAN that trekked (the city has more than 100 tertiary education BRAIN DRAIN across the tropics institutes). Catalina Pimiento is one Colombian scientist of South America and discovered a new But the key question being asked by Colom- who left and never returned. After graduating species of mouse oppossum (R. S. Voss bian scientists is whether science will find sup- from the Pontifical Xavierian University with et al. Am. Mus Novit. 3778, 1–27; 2013). port in the country’s post-war economy. For a degree in biology, she moved first to Mexico, He’s since returned to his native Colombia, years, their outlook has been pessimistic in then Panama, the United States, Switzerland, where he is a professor of biology at EAFIT the face of strained budgets, meagre resources Germany and now Wales, where she has a University in Medellín. and red tape that stymie the scientific process, postdoctoral fellowship at the University of explains Andrew Crawford, a US biologist Swansea, investigating mass extinctions like the What do you study? who, over the course of nine years at Bogotá’s one that took out the giant shark Carcharocles I work with marsupials, rodents and bats. Los Andes University, says he has developed megalodon. As much as it pains her, she won’t I’ve always been interested in fieldwork a sense of the possibilities and challenges of return to her country of birth. — being able to go to unexplored regions doing science in Colombia. “Because of my experiences and the career that have a high potential for diversity. I A reagent order that could be delivered in a opportunities I’ve had abroad, I decided to also work in museums and use genetic day in the United States or Europe, for exam- have nothing to do with Colombia,” she says. techniques to investigate diversity. ple, can take three months in Colombia, says “Colombia does not invest in science. It’s that Fiorentino. Monoclonal antibodies, she says, s i mp l e .” What’s it like to do fieldwork in Colombia? have sat for weeks without refrigeration in cus- That’s not to say that researchers in Colombia For decades Colombia had zones that toms, useless by the time they reached the lab. can’t make a living — or new discoveries — in were too dangerous to go into. The “If we do not improve these administrative the current climate. Juan Fernando Díaz Nieto, 2016 peace accord with the FARC, problems,” Fiorentino stresses, “Colombia will a biologist at EAFIT University in Medellín, has which ended the long civil war here, never, never be competitive.” a successful career identifying new opossums, helped give access to large regions of rodents and bats in the country’s hinterlands the country. It’s still complicated: to MEAGRE SUPPORT that had for decades been inaccessible because access these areas, one must be careful, Many of these problems, researchers point out, of the violence and threat of kidnapping associ- work out the logistics and sometimes are rooted in the government’s low financial ated with the civil war (see ‘Species seeker’). ask permission — and not just of the support for science. Colombia currently invests “The peace accord helped with access to government. Many areas have been taken only 0.67% of its gross domestic product in large regions of the country,” says Díaz Nieto, over by other armed groups. science and technology, compared with 2.8% who recently discovered two new marsupial in the United States. species along the river of Colombia’s Magda- Tell us about a project you recently led. Despite this, the country produces on aver- lena basin, in the northwest of the country. In July, I and colleagues led a biodiversity age more than 200 high-quality scientific “We described two new species of mouse oppo- project in the Anorí region in Colombia, studies a year on everything from physics sum that are endemic to Colombia, which we which is United Nations-backed and to Earth and environmental sciences to the found on either side of the Magdalena River,” involved ex-combatants from the FARC. life sciences, according to the Nature Index, he explains. They weren’t serving as guides but as which tracks publication in high-quality sci- Díaz Nieto, who gained his PhD at the co-investigators. We planned the project entific journals. Recent Colombian papers University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, says with them. After the fieldwork they came have made advances in research on dark mat- he was able to make the discoveries because “in to our laboratories in Medellín, working ter, urban lizards and forest fragmentation. But lieu of large budgets, we relied on the coopera- alongside us. that output trails behind that of other coun- tion of colleagues at other Colombian institu- tries in the region, such as Brazil and Argen- tions and cobbled together many small grants What’s the future for science in Colombia? tina, which until recently invested a lot more from the National Science Foundation, the There’s a lot of altruism among in research. Colombia’s spending was only one- University of Minnesota and the American researchers here. One person might go fifth of Argentina’s in 2015, for example. Today, Society of Mammalogists.” into a difficult zone and end up giving however, uncertain political and economic the world access to a valuable sample. conditions in those two countries might offer SCIENCE TAX There are lots of social issues in our Colombia a chance to catch up. The Colombian government is trying to get country that we have to face. But we are Last year, 13 Nobel laureates from around better at funding science, however. A law willing — our passion will the world wrote to then-president Juan passed in 2012 diverted 10% of royalties from guide us. ■ Manuel Santos, urging him to raise the natural-resource extraction into a science and government’s investment. “The Colom- technology fund that was allocated across INTERVIEW BY ALESZU BAJAK bian budget for science and technology for Colombia’s 32 government departments. This interview has been edited for length and 2018 continues to be extremely low,” they The initiative was designed to help stimulate clarity. wrote, adding: “The consequences will be science by sponsoring research projects and