LETTER: A research grant of RM150,000 from Yayasan Penyelidikan Antartika Sultan Mizan (YPASM) in 2018 has allowed a team led by me to study penguin decomposition under Antarctica climate, a subject which is under studied but yet, very interesting.
The team made up of five people including me, a forensic entomologist from the Faculty of Medicine, UiTM as Principal Investigator.
I visited Antarctica from December 16, 2019 until January 6, 2020 (a duration of 3-week) and was attached to King Sejong Station (a South Korean research station under KOPRI - Korean Polar Research Institute), St. George Island, Antarctic Peninsula (1,000 km from the South America continent).
I met up with Korean scientists at Punta Arenas, Chile, before taking a chartered flight to King Sejong station. There, i visited the penguin colonies at the ASPA (Antarctic Specially Protected Area) 171 and collecting carrion samples in the vicinity of penguin rookeries which were occupied by approximately 5,000 breeding pairs.
For the study, I collected biological samples on and from penguin carcasses and these include swabs, soils, and penguin bones. Along the course of three weeks in Antarctica, I found a total of 25 penguin carcasses, and brought back the samples to Malaysia upon the completion of the fieldwork.
My co-researchers include Associate Professor Dr. Jamal Hussaini (medical microbiologist, Faculty of Medicine, UiTM); Mohd Hafizi Mahmud (medical radiographer, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiTM); Dr. Lucas Low Van Lun (geneticist, Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre (TIDREC), Universiti Malaya) and Dr. Siti Sofo Ismail (Soil chemist, Department of Chemical Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu).
Our research project entitled "Necrobiome community structure and soil chemistry profiles associated with penguin carcasses and its correlations with bone density under Antarctica climate."
The project is expected to complete within three years and aimed to produce a PhD graduate. Currently, a PhD student, Nur Adilla Zaini, who graduated with a Master degree from University of Manchester, UK, is undertaking the study and aiming the find out the answers for the unsolved research questions: how do penguins decompose in Antarctica.
The main goal of the research is to understand how penguin carcasses decompose under Antarctica environment which is known to be extremely cold and dry.
The team is determined to investigate (i) what type of bacteria and arthropods are involved during the decomposition process of penguin carcasses; (ii) how does soil chemistry change along the penguin decomposition process and; (iii) How does the penguin's bone density change overtime?
These research questions are relevant in order to understand how nutrient cycling works under the extreme environment (i.e., freezing temperature all year long in the Antarctica).
Other planets, for example, like Mars, might have similar condition in Antarctica (extreme dryness and low temperature), thus, Antarctica is the natural field laboratory that is readily available to human beings to simulate the environmental condition of other terrestrial planets in the solar system.
It is paramount important for human beings to understand the nutrient cycle simply because nutrient cycling is an important ecosystem function that ensures food security, food productivity, and sustainability on Earth.
If the human race can fully understand how the nutrient cycling works, it is possible to produce food via agricultural activities at any place, including extreme environments.
This will solve the fundamental issue (i.e., food) during space exploration and increase our survival chances when human species have landed in a new planet in the future.
Therefore, the understanding of how carcasses decompose and how the nutrients recycle is crucial and fundamental for the entire food web. However, little is known about this important ecological function at the polar regions, especially Antarctica.
Currently, the team are working on the sample analyses and will share their research findings in the future not too far from now.
One of the platforms to share the research output, particularly scientific discoveries generated from both polar regions, is the Malaysian International Seminar on Antarctica (MISA).
This year is the ninth seminar and will be jointly organised by the Ministry of Environment and Water (KASA), UiTM, Yayasan Penyelidikan Antartika Sultan Mizan (YPASM) and National Antarctic Research Centre (NARC), Malaysia.
In this seminar, four world renowned Antarctic researchers are invited to share their research findings namely Prof Datuk Dr Azizan Abu Samah (University of Malaya), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Daniela Liggett (University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand), Prof. Dr. Satoshi Imura (National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Japan) and Dr. Thomas Bracegirdle (British Antarctic Survey, UK).
The theme of the seminar is "Polar Regions Matter in Our Climate Crisis" which is utterly timely to address the urgent need to pay attention to the importance of polar regions in relation with the on-going climate crisis experiencing by the entire human race.
For more information about this online international seminar, kindly visit the official website https://misa9.uitm.edu.my/index.php
DR HEO CHONG CHIN
Director, Institute of Medical Molecular Biotechnology (IMMB), Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM)
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times