We are so excited to have George Lohay, PhD talk with us about his work collecting DNA from wild giraffes in Tanzania, how it is analyzed and what kind of information is learned from it.

George is a post-doctoral research scholar at Pennsylvania State University and works in partnership with Wild Nature Institute to develop techniques to non-invasively collect DNA from giraffe dung for a variety of genetic studies, including establishing pedigrees for giraffe in the Tarangire Ecosystem, and understanding historical and current gene flow across giraffe populations in Tanzania.

He has more than 10 years of research experience – he worked as a research assistant for the Serengeti Lion Project, conducted research on African Savanna elephants and Masai giraffes. He received a BA in Philosophy from Uganda Martyrs University, a BSc in Wildlife Science and Conservation from the University of Dar es Salaam, and a PhD in Biology from Pennsylvania State University. He hails from Singida in central Tanzania.

And, Samantha Beal, a Junior Giraffe Club facilitator, will also be talking about collecting DNA. Samantha was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario and from an early age was drawn to oceanic animals. She moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to do an undergraduate degree in marine biology and is currently working on her Masters degree at Dalhousie University. In this degree, she is working on developing environmental DNA tools to detect the endangered Atlantic Whitefish in their natural habitat.

 See you on Saturday, February 11th!