PSU Magazine Winter 2003

f urmy how one conversation can shape the road ahead, sometimes for many miles. That's what happened with biologist Luis Ruedas. As an undergraduate at New York's Fordham University, Ruedas approached faculty member Bob Dowler with a proposal to study bears. Dowler told the student he wasn 't in the market for any more bear stud– ies, but sa id , "Why don't you sti ck around and help me do some work with mice." He did. That was in 1982, and Ruedas, now assistant professor of biology at Portland State, has been working with small mammals ever since. This past summer, while on an expedition to the remote Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Ruedas struck scientific gold. One of the small furry creatures to fall into his traps was a species of shrew that had remained unknown in the vast kingdom of the Earth's animals. To the layman , the little gray rodent looks a lot like a field mouse or mole you'd find in the backyard. But Ruedas, who has studied a veritable pied piper's worth of rats, bats, mice, and other mdenlia, knew right away that he was on LO something. "I know bats and shrews well enough that I know when something is new and different. When l saw it 1 said , 'What the heck is that?'" He scrambled for his reference materials and began yelling for Dowler, who was along for pan of the trip. His old Ford– ham professor and mentor was more cautious about the find, but Ruedas was beside himself. "Shrews excite me to begin with ," he says. "It's hard Lo put into words that excitement when you know you have something new. Your hean rate goes up, excitement goes up and your mood changes Lo elation. " DNA testing and skull exami nations of the find go on, but he says, "there is absolutely no doubt. " f he shrew, from the genus corsidura, is as yet unnamed. Ruedas is looking for a donor Lo name the shrew and help fund further stud– ies of the biologically rich island where