ecologist

Over the past two years, the founding members have assembled an international community of microbiologists, ecologists, legal experts, and Indigenous knowledge holders from more than 30 countries.

The Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute and ecologist Grant Hopcraft have tracked up to 50 collared wildebeest for the past two decades as they migrated through the Serengeti and Maasai Mara.

"It paints a pretty stark and harrowing picture," Connor Bamford, a marine ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey and lead author of the study, told AFP.

For many years, ecologists assumed that plants reached remote islands mainly through special traits that allowed long-distance travel, such as fruits that attract birds to eat and later disperse their seeds.

"I am not eating my own rice yet," the ecologist joked.