Earlier this week nearly 2,000 of the world's leading environmental scientists of various disciplines met in Brasilia to present papers at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology. The conference featured more than 750 oral presentations and 965 scientific abstracts.One of the endangered animals discussed was the Komodo Dragon, with a paper from Tim Jessop and his team on the "Management and Conservation Requirements for Komodo Dragon Populations in Komodo National Park, Indonesia".
Our results indicate that major differences in demography and ecology exist between dragon populations on the 2 large islands of Komodo and Rinca and the 2 small islands of Motang and Kode. Specifically, island area influences prey diversity and availability which, in turn, influences the density, growth and body size of dragons.The full summary can be found about half way down the Mongabay page.
And here's a previous Komodo Dragon research paper by Tim Jessop that we've reported on before, specifically "Distribution, use and selection of nest type by Komodo Dragons".
