Borneo Calling

OFI volunteer Rebecca Reeder & friend. Photo courtesy Bill Hunt.

Orangutan extinction wasn't an issue when OFI director, Biruté Mary Galdikas, came to live in Central Borneo 40 years ago. Rebecca Reeder recalls the National Geographic cover story Galdikas wrote at Camp Leakey in 1975, and the famous photo of her holding one orangutan on her hip and another by the hand. Oh, how she envied Galdikas spending her life in one of the last wild places on earth. Little did she know that 35 years later, she'd be here, too.

Mussel Math: Sex outside the shell

Photo of Lindsey Bailey by Carolyn Cruz
Lindsey Bailey is putting the sex lives of mussels under the microscope. The invasive zebra and quagga mussels threaten native species, clog boat engines and water pipes and cost the U.S. billions of dollars each year. She's checking to see whether radiated sperm is still able to bind and fuse to the egg. If so, Bailey is hoping for a new equation: where one egg plus one damaged sperm equals no mussel at all.