SANDAKAN: A collaborative research project between Dr. Tan Ming Kai of the National University of Singapore and the Sabah Forestry Department has won Sabah’s Best Biodiversity Research Award under the International Researcher Category, organised by the Sabah Biodiversity Centre.
Dr. Arthur Y.C. Chung and Razy Japir are the local collaborators for Dr. Tan’s research entitled “Contribution to the Taxonomy and Ecology of Orthoptera from the Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC), Sandakan, Sabah.”.
Dr. Tan, also a research associate with the Natural History Museum of Paris, France, is a specialist on the insect order Orthoptera, which includes crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers.
Besides taxonomy, diversity, and ecology, he studies the calling songs of crickets and katydids for acoustic biomonitoring. In this research, a total of 12 scientific papers were published, and five species new to science were described.
Through this collaboration, he has examined the Orthoptera collection at the Forest Research Centre (FRC) in Sepilok and assisted in producing a biodiversity poster on Orthoptera for environmental awareness, as well as presented talks to FRC researchers and staff.
The Chief Conservator of Forests, Datuk Frederick Kugan, is glad that such collaboration is not only benefiting international researchers but also local researchers in terms of capacity building and sharing of research knowledge.
Research findings from this study would contribute towards biodiversity conservation and the advancement of research in forest insect diversity and ecology.
To date, there have been more than 70 collaborative research projects under the Sabah Forestry Department with various local and international research institutions, with FRC researchers as local collaborators since 2020.
Datuk Kugan also noted that RDC is not only known for environmental education and forest recreation but also for tropical forestry research.
The biodiversity award was presented on June 11, 2024, in Kota Kinabalu, in conjunction with the state-level World’s Biodiversity Day. The local collaborators represented Dr. Tan Ming Kai in receiving the award from the Assistant Minister to the Chief Minister, Datuk Abidin Madingkir, who represented the Chief Minister during the event.
Dr Tan Ming Kai (centre) with Dr Arthur Chung (left) and Razy Japir at the Forest Research Centre, Sepilok, in 2022.
