What sort of work do you do? valacyclovir picture "This study makes a valuable contribution in quantifying how fast the extinctions take placeâ?very fast in this case," says Ilkka Hanski, an ecologist at the University of Helsinki. But he notes that the study does not tease out whether the fragmentation or the rat invasion had a greater impact. Robin Chazdon, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, notes that the mechanism by which the invasive rats contributed to the demise of native speciesâ?whether they devoured available food or introduced new diseasesâ?is not clear. "These findings are not directly relevant to forest fragments in terrestrial landscapes," where animals from surrounding areas could recolonize the isolated patch, she says.