URIs_MOMENTUM_Research_and_Innovation_Magazine_Spring_2023_M

“WE WERE ABLE TO DEPLOY MOST OF THE TECHNOLOGY OF A ‘BIG SHIP’ OCEANOGRAPHIC EXPEDITION FROM A SMALL SAILBOAT.”

Dolphins swimming alongside Jocara.

- BRIDGET BUXTON

frontier outposts became depopulated and isolated, effectively becoming islands as far as the local rats were concerned. You could say these Serbian rats are Roman Empire rats.” Recent genetic studies suggest that black rat populations around the world can be linked to two genetically distinctive waves of expansion — the first during the Roman Empire, and the second during the revival of global trade led mainly by Arab seafarers in the Medieval period. The genetic similarity between the Chagos rats and the legacy population of Justiniana Prima, abandoned in the 7 th century CE, is intriguing. Buxton immediately contacted a colleague in Tanzania, Anthropology Professor Felix Chami of Dar es Salaam University, to share the preliminary Chagos results. Chami and his team are researching mysterious sunken ruins and Roman pottery found on the Tanzanian island of Mafia, a hypothetical jumping off point for Roman-era monsoon voyagers. The evidence was now even more compelling: Mafia in Tanzania must be Africa’s fabled lost Roman port of Rhapta. Buxton will join the Tanzanian team as they begin mapping the site this summer. For the Munshi-South lab, the next step is to sequence the entire genomes of the Chagos rats to pin down the origins and timing of divergence between Chagos and the rat populations of India, Madagascar, and East Africa. The analysis should be completed before Buxton returns to Chagos, which she hopes to do in 2024. However, her expedition goals are no longer driven only by the desire to find shipwrecks. Her current fundraising is directed towards assisting the Chagos Conservation Trust’s efforts to eradicate the rats and restore the archipelago’s unique biodiversity. “This expedition changed me and changed the way I view the world,” Buxton says. “I’ve done this for more than 20 years. I’ve found a lot of shipwrecks. I know what it’s like to pick up handfuls of gold coins and excavate ancient treasures. At the end of the day, that’s not what matters. It’s the islands themselves that are important — the birds and the coconut crabs, the reefs, and the ocean. They are the real treasure.” The project that brought Buxton hundreds of miles across the Indian Ocean showed how a little innovation and a lot of passion can make even the most impossible-sounding research endeavor possible.

Page 20 | The University of Rhode Island { MOMENTUM: RESEARCH & INNOVATION }

SPRING | 2023 Page 21