FSML: Institutional Planning to Upgrade Laboratory Facilities at a Tropical Rainforest Research Station

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Ranomafana Biological Station is located in Ranomafana National Park(RNP) in southeast Madagascar. The station is operated by the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environrnents (ICTE)affiliated with the State University of New York and Stony Brook. The station property has been leased to ICTE and the University of Antananarivo for 99 years by the Association Nationale pour la Gestiondes Aires Protegees (ANGAP), the park service of Madagascar. Over one hundred faculty-level researchers and nearly twice that nurnber of students, most from US universities, have conducted research at RNPsince the station was built in 1989. Madagascar is a megadiversity country, one of the five countries in the world that contain the most species of plants and animals. Ranomafana National Park is one of the highest biodiversity sites in Madaga'scar. The Ranomafana Biological Station (RBS) is the only major biological research station in the rain forest of sites Madagascar. Much of the flora and fauna of Madagascar is endemic and many taxa are living representatives of lineages usually existing elsewhere on earth only in the fossil record. Therefore the rain forest at RNP serves as an excellent comparison to some of the better-studied rain forest sites in the neotropics, Africa and Asia. The Ranomafana National Park protects 41,500 ha of rain forest, half of it pristine. The biodiversity of the park was virtually unknown when researchers started focussing on the area 10 years ago. Much of the research effort during the first 10 years at the RBS has been devoted to the essential work of systematists. However, considerable research has also been conducted on behavioral ecology of mamrnals and birds and important community dynamics such as seed-dispersal, pollination, predation and phenology. This large body of information has been collected at a biological station that has neither electricity nor running water. Most of these data come from observation-based fi eld research because processing and analysis of sarnples and data are severely restricted by the primitive laboratory facilities. This project will allow the RBS leardership to carry out the comprehensive planning necessary to upgrade the laboratory and living facilities at the RBS. The results of this planning grant will be a report that details how best to expand the research facilities to accomrnodate long-term researchers using technically-oriented methods that take advantage of existing and developing research technology. Aquatic ecologists, systematists, behavioral ecologists, community ecologists, and conservation biologists will participate in planning the biological station upgrade so that they can improve the quality and quantity of data they collect.