Le journal de l'IRD
n° 38 January-February 2007
Translator: Nicholas Flay
JEAI
Young teams on the road
to autonomy
p. 4 Partners
Scientific and technological culture
in the South
Training in tse-tse
fly control
s part of a new partnership scheme
between IRD research unit UR177
(“Trypanosomoses africaines”) and the
Angolan Ministry of Health’s Institut de
combat et de contrôle de la trypanosomiase (ICCT), a training workshop for
40 Health ministry agents took place from
6 to 18 November at Viana hospital, on
the outskirts of Luanda, the capital. This
workshop, led by Pascal Grébaut (IRD,
Montpellier), Philippe Truc (IRD, Angola)
and Drs Makiadi and Mafouta from the
ICCT gave the opportunity to technicians
coming from the Centres for Screening
and Treatment of several provinces to
become trained in tse-tse biology and
ecology, and also in dissection and capture techniques.
p. 2 News
Oases of the deep oceans
S
A new impulse
I
A
© IRD/P. Truc
© IRD/P. Blanchon
Babassu palm
Taking advantage of an invasion
Attalea speciosa, better known as babassu, is a palm used in the Brazilian extrac-
p. 4 Partners
Angola
S
ince 2002,
the IRD has
been encouraging the emergence, consolidation and
reinforcement
of
research
teams in the
countries of
the South. This
is done on the basis of a partnership with
the IRD’s units. Thirty-seven teams originating from Africa, Latin America and
Asia have to date been selected as young
associate teams of the IRD (JEAI). Now that
the longest established ones are coming
to maturity, the question arises as to how
the necessarily unique experience of each
team could be used to full advantage for
all the teams. This broad-based team spirit that goes beyond the teams themselves
were at the centre of the discussions that
contributed to the first JEAI workshopencounter.
“During the workshop, we were able to
discuss the ways of finding sources of
finance and grants for the members and
students of the team, which lead to the
team’s strengthening and continuity.”
(Rosario ROJAS, JEAI UIPN-UPCH, Peru)
n 2004, the French Ministry of Foreign
Affairs commissioned the IRD to implement the project for Promotion of scientific and technological culture (PCST) in ten
countries of the African continent. This
programme,
financed by
the Priority
Solidarity
Fund, is endowed with
a budget of
2.8 million
Euros. Many actions were undertaken in
the subsequent two years. Three calls for
applications have resulted in provision of
financial and technical support for
70 projects: scientific clubs and workshops, special science-promoting festivals, series of conferences and discussions, exhibitions, radio programmes or
television and video documentaries, Web
sites, brochures and cartoon-style literature, theatres and scientific story telling.
Beyond the diversity of their form and
their content, these projects have the
common objective: a broad diffusion of
scientific knowledge, in particular among
young people.
ubmarine
seamounts constitute
deep water ecosystems
particularly rich in fauna
much of which remains
to be discovered. Are
they oases of life or
islands of biodiversity
isolated from the rest of
the ocean ecosystems?
Four species of Galathea, small crustaceans
known as squat lobsters, particularly abundant on these submarine mounts, were
examined by Sarah Samadi and her team
from the research unit “Systématique
Adaptation et Évolution” (UMR 148). They
showed these mounts to be oases of life,
the home to assemblages of numerous
species that are in fact present in other
places, rather than isolated islands of
endemic biodiversity. This finding gives
added importance to their conservation.
The scientists running the study consider
that “their conservation can protect a great
number of species over a very small area,
easy to monitor”. The apparent absence of
endemism does not therefore in any way
reduce the potential of the submarine
mounts as biodiversity reserves. Rather it
changes the reasons for which these
reserves must be established.
Does globalization pay?
G
lobalization
is being expressed by the
intensification of
international
financial flows. It
is accompanied
by an ever stronger concentration
of wealth in the
world while the
financialization of
the overall economy affects employment,
the
location of jobs
and the revenues
generated
by
work.
Everywhere, the
pauperization of
the most vulnerable social groups
has become so
stark that, on the
initiative of the
World Bank, the “fight against poverty”
was decreed as a Millennium objective. In
Europe, the media regularly puts the spotlight on redundancies and relocations
resulting from companies’ race for profitability. At the same time, the existence of
increasing numbers of “working poor” is
now a commonplace reality in every continent. In any case, working situations and
their relationships to the market remain
contrasted from one society to another.
In order to gain better understanding of
any links between these phenomena and
investigate their variations, the scientists
of the research unit “Travail et globalisation” (UR003) are focusing on the transformations that affect money, its uses and
representations in a global context where
the market is becoming generalized as the
economic environment. Money itself is a
particularly interesting element for analysis because it makes a link to other
spheres of the life of society. The relations
that it creates and unties as it circulates
thus provide a point from which to
observe the whole of a particular society.
Money accumulates in some places,
becomes rare in others. This process very
often causes debt or enslavement. It can
sometimes be liberating, sowing prestige,
or it can engender contempt in its passage, providing compensation with
largesse or sparingly. It is exchanged for
primary food needs or ostentatious goods,
prestigious political roles or qualifications,
irrigating working relationships, kinship,
relations with the State or with the divinities. But it also enters into marriages, baptisms and other rituals by means of which
a society’s life reproduces itself.
When financialization and the economic
reforms that hold it up affect work and
jobs, the whole system of values that the
monetary flows feed is upset. Even when
“crisis” is followed by rapid recovery of
growth, individuals’ and families’ relationship with work and money has been
turned completely upside down in the
space of a few years.
p. 13 IRD World
Bird flu
The young
scientists of
Yaoundé criticise
lack of information
T
he young scientists’ group, “Club
jeunes pour la recherche pour le
développement” set up in Yaoundé with
the IRD, has run an enquiry into the risks of
transmission of avian influenza in this city.
Consult the articles in full on the IRD Internet site: http://www.ird.fr
© IRD/F. Biot
New species made – (almost) on live!
Phylogenetic analysis shows that two
species of palm – Astrocaryum urostachys
and A. macrocalyx – show one of the lowest levels of genetic and morphological
differentiation among 17 closely-related
species. This is an expression of a speciation event which is recent or under way.
The boundary of the distribution zones of
these two sister species traces the Iquitos
Arc (Peru), a low relief sedimentary formation several kilometres long.
This region is still rising up under the effect
of the Andean orogenesis. A hilly relief has
thus formed on which A. macrocalyx is
encountered, whereas A. urostachys is
abundant on the alluvial terraces along
the streams and rivers. The two species are
in contact at the edge of the Iquitos Arc.
They do not mix together. They conserve
their morphological differences and show
a distinct ecological difference linked to a
geomorphological change.
Other couples of
species, currently
under study, will
give the opportunity to test further
the
hypothesis
which matches up
recent geological
history with the
diversity of palms
of the western
Amazonian Basin.
Mycorrhiza to the rescue
Help for suffering Moroccan palms
The Marrakech palm grove has always
been a feature of pride for the people of
Marrakech. In this region, up to 1998, the
date palm covered a surface area of
12 000 ha. But changes have been occurring. Symptoms of degeneration are
appearing. Is the survival of this ecosystem under threat? The research programme initiated jointly by Cadi Ayyad
University of Marrakech, the Groupe de
recherche et d’information sur l’agriculture oasienne and an IRD team from research unit UR040, “Symbioses tropicales et
méditerranéennes”, aims to bring evidence
of the effect of
arbuscular mycorrhizan fungi – or
endomycorrhyzae –
on the growth of
young palm plants
in conditions of
water stress or salt
stress, as well as the role of these
symbionts against the pathogenic fungus
responsible for bayoud (a frequent vascular
disease in Moroccan palm groves).
p. 7 Research
tion industry (harvesting of natural products for marketing). As an oleaginous
plant, this species has high economic
value in several states of Brazil. A research
programme conducted in the state of
Pará by the IRD, INPA and UFRA found evidence for three types of distribution, linked to the ways in which colonized land
has been used.
Since 2005, a joint programme between
the IRD and Embrapa in a new area (State
of Tocantins) has
characterized the
morphology of
the fruit, its
influence on oil
production and
the way in which
the palm developed in the landscape.
© dr
p. 6 Training
Freezing coconut embryos
The method of cryopreservation of
coconut embryos in liquid nitrogen,
developed 15 years ago by a joint IRD/CIRAD
team from research unit UR142, allowed
the creation of cryobanks and therefore
the safeguarding of the species’ genetic
resources. Far from
stopping at this
advance, the
team sought
to rid embryos
of pathogens
by developing
a cryopreservation process for the
plumule, or apical mersitem, of the
embryo (the part of the embryo which
produces the future aerial part of the
plant).
© IRD/A. Brauman
© IRD/C. Neel
© IRD/M. Dukhan
Oil palm
Flowering under
the microscope
The work of the IRD
team “Embryogenèse
des Arécacées” of
research unit UR142,
“Biologie des espèces
pérennes cultivées” (UMR
BEPC), published in 2005,
filled a gap in fundamental research. It
provided the first complete microscopic
description of flowering in palms. The
study at macroscopic scale was done in
1935.
© Meddich Abdelilah
F
© UMR BEPC/H. Adam
The Palm family (Arecaceae) brings together 2400 species, most of which live in the
tropics. Many species of palm play an
important role in agriculture of countries
of the South, either as staple domestic food
crops, or as cash crops. It is the family of
plants for which there are the greatest
number of uses: the coconut palm for instance is called “The tree with 100 uses”.
The IRD, with its partners, has accomplished 20 years of research on palms, particularly on the three most economically
prominent species, represented in all the
major tropical ecosystems: the oil palm
(tropical rainforest), the date palm (oases
of arid regions) and the coconut (island
habitats).
or several years it has been
established that the HIV-1 virus
causing the human Aids pandemic
results from interspecies transmission of a Simian form (SIVcpz) from
the chimpanzee to humans.
However, the discovery of an
immunodeficiency virus in the gorilla has rekindled the debate on this
viral transmission between species.
An international research team led
by Martine Peeters and Eric
Delaporte (UMR 145 “VIH/Sida et maladies associées”) made this discovery. The chimpanzee’s status as the
natural reservoir of SIV/HIV is not
called into question, nevertheless
the research team is investigating
the chain of transmission of HIV-1
group O, a form closely related to
the virus from the gorilla. Would
this viral group have been transmitted from the infected chimpanzee,
then to the gorilla which would
then have passed it on to humans?
How the virus might have passed
from chimpanzee to gorilla remains
to be unravelled, not an easy task
considering that the gorilla is herbivore and tends not to forge contacts with its chimpanzee cousins.
© IRD/M. Dukhan
Palms
© IRD/P. Laboute
Beware
of the gorilla
Interview with Abdourahman Daher
“Djibouti is subjected to extreme
climatic
conditions, a period of
drought installed
since the 1980s
and a high degree
of food dependence
because
the country produces only 11 % of its needs in fruit and
vegetables, the rest being imported from
neighbouring countries like Ethiopia and
the Yemen”, explains Abdourahman
Daher, young teacher-researcher being
hosted at Montpellier in the research unit
“Biologie des espèces pérennes cultivées”
(UR142/UMR BEPC). Faced with this situation,
the Djibouti government has invested
heavily in a development programme for
cultivating the date palm Phœnix dactylifera.
© IRD/ J.-C. Pintaud
p. 8-10 Research
Biodiversity
p. 1 News
© IRD/ D. Mitja
Abstracts for the international issue