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Jessica Minard, the first University of Arkansas student to participate in the Organization for Tropical Studies in South Africa, was taught a different field of science every week. The students studied in the South African National Parks, spending most of their time in the Kruger and Mapungubwe Parks.
Minard took classes where the visiting professor was an accomplished scientist in his or her field. A few of the fields included in the program were: the study of birds, reptiles, mammals and bats. The professors would stay for a week, teach their specialty relating to ecology, and lead a field research study.
Jessica Minard: Part of the experience was the chance that we got to have with visiting professors. So we had seven, what were called Faculty Field Projects or FFP's, where visiting professors came from not just South Africa but we had a couple come from Costa Rica, to teach us their sort of specialty in ecology.
One of Minard's field projects on elephants studied the increasing elephant population and the damage they cause on baobab trees in the Mapungubwe Park.
Jessica Minard: We did find a significant difference between easy to access trees and hard to access trees. And that was determined based on the percent rockiness of the area the trees was found in as well as the slope. And so we thought that elephants wouldn't be able to access these trees if they were on slopes and rocky areas because it's hard for elephants to climb. We did actually witness some elephants climb up a rocky slope to get to a baobab tree.
Baobab trees are succulent plants. They have massive swollen trunks consisting of soft spongy wood saturated with water. Elephants tear off the bark, rip limbs and push over smaller baobabs to get to the water the tree holds. This can severely damage the trees.
Jessica Minard: And elephants are native to the Mapungubwe area but were actually excluded in the hundred years prior to 2003. It provided this excellent study that we could, you know, have the years that elephants were in this park. So we surveyed 100 trees to see if there were keystones and we did biodiversity survey plots under the tree and away from the tree as well as assess the elephant damage to each tree.
Although the team's hypothesis that the damage of the baobab trees didn't seem to be growing in relation to the increased elephant population, Minard's fieldwork in South Africa has changed her perspectives on her future.
Jessica Minard: My overall experience with South Africa was a wonderful one. It was something that I had never planned for myself. I thought I was going to have to do research in a lab on campus. So I was very excited and thrilled to get the chance to do actual fieldwork in one of the most diverse national parks in the world and get to experience all the different kinds of ecology that I did get to experience. Spending so much time with those people and realizing how much those relationships meant to me and how much I wanted to work with people, I'm actually going to get a doctorate in physical therapy.