A life devoted to science

Text: Karen Naundorf

Laura Salazar doesn’t need an alarm clock. “I hear the birds,” she says. She is woken by the calls of the crested oropendolas that nest in front of her house. Salazar lives in Tena, on the edge of the Ecuadorian rainforest. “Living here is like being in paradise,” smiles Salazar, who wanted even as a child to be a researcher. Her father was against the idea, how­ever, fearing she wouldn’t be able to find a job. Without his knowledge she applied for a student loan, persuaded him to let her go ahead and studied biology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito. Salazar immersed herself in the world of plants at the university’s scientific herbarium – and decided what she wanted to specialise in: fern research. “Ferns have two life phases: the one we are familiar with from the plant itself, the sporophyte phase. And the other, when they are only a few millimetres in size and completely unremark­able, is the prothallus phase,” Salazar explains. “I found this fascinating and wanted to know more!”

Ferns manage to survive in very different habitats and have a long evolutionary history: they already existed when dinosaurs were around – and indeed outlived them. For her PhD, Laura Salazar spent three years recording the dimensions of a total of 17,000 plants at different altitudes, ranging from 500 to 4,000 metres, to learn more about their adaptability and the challenges they face. “In lowlands they are susceptible to drought, and at altitude to the rising temperatures brought about by climate change,” she explains.

She went to the University of Göttingen on a DAAD scholarship from 2009 to 2012, an experience that remains with her to this day. For one thing, because her time in Germany paved the way for later research collaborations. And for another, because it shaped her scientific work: “During the weekly seminars at our department we would present the progress we had made in our research to doctoral candidates and lecturers and received valuable feedback. I still try to follow the same approach nowadays.” As a DAAD ambassador she encourages her students to apply for a scholarship: “One becomes part of a wonderful network as a result, with ties that never break.”

These days, Salazar conducts her research at the Amazon Regional University Ikiam. She studies sections of forest between conservation areas that serve as ecological corridors and allow wild animals and plant species to migrate, spread and intermingle. And she is planning new experiments: “We want to see which ferns can adapt to dry conditions, and how they do so.” After all, the effects of climate change can also be felt strongly in the Amazon region, and ferns are particularly sensitive to periods of drought. “Without sufficient moisture they cannot reproduce.”

She is very proud of how environmentally conscious her ten-year-old son is. He recently composed his first own rap song – about forests and resistance: “We will fight for the Amazon. For a home without mining. (…) Come on, let’s protect this land, if we don’t it will soon be lost.” —