TREASURE ISLAND
Gad Perry takes his graduate students tot he wondrous British Virgin Islands for an adventure in research.
Written by Tiffany Berry
Searching an island for lost treasure is an adventure. A world full of imaginary pirates and treasure maps, most of all, an adventure has a goal, which if reached, will bring fortune. As for a young boy who grew up in Israel, tropical islands were considered a fortune in themselves, because he had never come close to seeing such an environment.
As he grew, he realized this uncharted territory had to be explored. Gad Perry, Ph.D., Texas Tech University professor of conservation biology, brought this passion to West Texas by taking students in person to the treasure of the islands.
“As a young boy, I would watch documentaries on the tropical islands, which were an environment so different from my own. This difference sparked a fire in me to study these oases and all that they hold,” says Perry.
Perry decided to study this world of new discoveries throughout his college education as he developed an interest in the study of reptiles. Perry now researches feeding ecology and behavior, physiological ecology, and conservation.
As a professor, not only did he desire to teach students about the habitats of the tropical world, but he believed that he had to do more to engage his students with this environment that they were hearing so much about in the classroom.
When making his journey to Texas Tech, Perry desired to bring tropical ecology to West Texas college students; the university administration jumped at the chance of hands-on research for its students.
The first class began in Fall 2002, when halfway through the semester, Perry brought his master’s and doctoral students for two weeks to the wondrous British Virgin Islands for an adventure in research.
“The island we were fortunate enough to stay on was called Guana Island. The Conservation Agency and the Falconwood Foundation provided grant monies to cover the room and board for the students so that their only cost was for airfare. Through the Office of International Affairs, Texas Tech University helped with a portion of those costs,” Perry explains.
Every year, the British Virgin Islands H. Lavity Stoutt Community College on Tortolla Island has a lecture series and research symposium. This year, students and professors from Texas Tech shared their discoveries as guest speakers at the event.
Jennifer Owen, a first-year wildlife sciences graduate student, comments that the island was unlike any place she had ever seen. “I have been to Canada and Mexico, but I have never been to a tropical island. The environment looked like the postcards,” Owen explains. “We made many discoveries and saw various kinds of animals. Going to the tropical islands was the best hands-on experience I have had involving research.”
At the beginning of the semester, the class members formulated the research project and arrived on the islands in October 2003. Working with six other graduate students, Owen studied the behavior of a native lizard, called the crested anole (Anolis cristatellus).
“We wanted to see how lizards of different sizes behaved throughout the day. We looked at when they were out and visible and also what they spent their time doing,” Owens explains.
The graduate students also recorded whether the lizards did their activities in the sun, shade or partial-sun. The work was related to how the lizards behaviorally deal with the heat and humidity of the island and how they control their temperature, she notes.
“We would wake up in the mornings and conduct research all day long. In the evenings, we would compile the data. Everyday was an adventure in an environment very unlike our home in West Texas,” Owen comments.
As a starting master’s student, Owen was not as experienced with developing a research plan. “Now that we have developed our research first-hand, we can take our analyses and turn those into publications. I am lucky that I have had an in-depth quality research experience.”
“The great thing about bringing these students to a place that they have never been is that they freely can study something they have been looking at in a textbook for years,” says Perry.
A little boy’s Treasure Island dreams have turned into adventures for his students at Texas Tech University. Their ventures have turned up the riches of a sacred site, bringing knowledge and hands-on experience to the world of research, a true treasure.
Story produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing
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