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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of by

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about lichens. That's right. I'm

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Speaker 1: excited for this one because the lichen are the type

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Speaker 1: of life form that are are easy to take for granted,

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Speaker 1: but at the same time are in more places than

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Speaker 1: you think, and are of course far more complicated and mysterious. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, compared to whatever you're sort of offhand thoughts

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Speaker 1: might be about them, and we're continuing to learn more

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Speaker 1: about them, just a year by year. Yeah. I was

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Speaker 1: just talking to Rachel a few minutes ago, and uh,

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Speaker 1: she was not actually aware that a lichen is not

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Speaker 1: a solitary type of organism, but in fact a composite

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Speaker 1: organism made of other organisms. Uh. And the I was

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Speaker 1: trying to come up with an analogy, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: what do you use using macroscopic life and and the

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Speaker 1: liking in a way is kind of like if you

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Speaker 1: had like a human being or a bear or something

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Speaker 1: sown to a tree and they were just helping each

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Speaker 1: other out, except it it gets even more complicated than that,

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Speaker 1: because it wouldn't just be based on some recent research.

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Speaker 1: It wouldn't just be a bear in a tree, would

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Speaker 1: be like a bear and a tree and maybe some

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Speaker 1: other types of vines and things like that. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: it's really one of these um things in nature that defies,

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Speaker 1: you know, our easy understanding of what life even is,

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Speaker 1: what does it mean to be a species? Because we've touched,

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Speaker 1: you know, on the the composite aspects of say even

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Speaker 1: human biology that we depend on microbes living inside us, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: But lin Is it's like a more pronounced expression of

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Speaker 1: this same idea. There's actually a wonderful quote from an

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Speaker 1: article that we're going to reference in this episode by

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Speaker 1: a young one of my favorite science writers in the

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Speaker 1: Atlantic that's about some recent discoveries in like in biology

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Speaker 1: and ed rights. Quote. When we think about the microbes

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Speaker 1: that influence the health of humans and other animals, the

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Speaker 1: algae that provide coral reefs with energy, the mitochondria that

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Speaker 1: power ourselves, the gut bacteria that allow cows to digest

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Speaker 1: their food, where the probiotic products that line supermarket shelves,

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Speaker 1: all of that can be traced to the birth of

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Speaker 1: symbiosis as a concept, and symbiosis in turn began with lichens. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a great quote from a great article that

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Speaker 1: will come back to again here. But I understand you

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Speaker 1: also have a little poetry for us here, Joe. Oh well, yeah, Robert,

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Speaker 1: you were asking if there were any great poems about lichens,

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Speaker 1: and I couldn't think of any at first, but I

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Speaker 1: did come across this actually fantastic poem by Jane Hirshfield

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Speaker 1: that I'm not going to read in full, but the

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Speaker 1: title is for the lobaria usnia witches hair map like

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Speaker 1: in beard, like in ground, like in she old lichen,

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Speaker 1: which is great because the title itself is almost like

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Speaker 1: a line from a Walt Whitman poem. But it has

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Speaker 1: that Walt Whitman spirit. It's very it's very propulsively enthusiastic

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Speaker 1: about the world. And so in this poem she speaks

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Speaker 1: about about lichen and she calls them a marriage of

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Speaker 1: fungi and algae, chemists of the air, changers of nitrogen

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Speaker 1: unusable into nitrogen usable. And then her last couple of

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Speaker 1: paragraphs in this poem go like those nameless ones who

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Speaker 1: kept painting shaping engraving, unseen, unread, unremembered, not caring if

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Speaker 1: they were no good, if they were past it, rock wolves,

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Speaker 1: water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust, ash of the woods, transformers, unvalued, uncounted,

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Speaker 1: cell by cell, word by word, making a world they

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Speaker 1: could live in that's really great. And that that comes

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Speaker 1: that that that kind of gets into something we'll touch

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Speaker 1: on later too, about this idea that Liken or some

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Speaker 1: of the the first settlers of new Lands, you know

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Speaker 1: that they are, they're the first to emerge on volcanic

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Speaker 1: soils and so forth. Yeah, And I like how she

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Speaker 1: compares them to sort of like unknown and unrecognized artists who,

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Speaker 1: in a way, by by laboring away producing say say

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Speaker 1: poetry or paintings or things that you know, most people

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Speaker 1: might never know the names of the authors and the

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Speaker 1: artists who created these things. But in doing so, they

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Speaker 1: create a culture, and they make an environment that people

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Speaker 1: can inhabit, the same way that that Likens sort of

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Speaker 1: like create an ecosystem within themselves. Yeah. Another thing I

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Speaker 1: love about this poem is that it reminds me of

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Speaker 1: college poetry class exercises where our our our teacher and

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Speaker 1: I remember I had I had a wonderful teacher. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That would more than one wonderful teacher in college poetry classes.

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Speaker 1: But I specifically remember my teacher, Maryland Collett would have

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Speaker 1: us go out and and roam around, find something natural,

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Speaker 1: and write a poem about it, you know, which I

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Speaker 1: think is a great exercise uh, you know, in in creativity.

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Speaker 1: But it also is perfect for liking, because I feel

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Speaker 1: like I've always found something at least soothing about moss

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Speaker 1: and and and especially liking uh and indeed something that

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Speaker 1: that inspires poetry on some level, even if you never

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Speaker 1: actually right it. It kind of forces a little poetic

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Speaker 1: energy in the head because I remember as a child

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Speaker 1: I loved like touching varieties of lichen and moss. You know,

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Speaker 1: we go out and scramble around on the rocks, and

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Speaker 1: when you scramble around on the rocks, you're always finding uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, remarkably new to you alien life, little red

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Speaker 1: um uh, the little red arachnids uh that are that

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Speaker 1: are roaming around. And then also you know, different types

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Speaker 1: of lins, sometimes beautifully colored. Uh. I also love that

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Speaker 1: lin always had this this kind of miniature world feel

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Speaker 1: to them, something that was probably compounded by the fact

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Speaker 1: that my dad kept some miniature railroad dried out liking

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Speaker 1: that he would use, like facing model tank kit and

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing, like little dried out likings that

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Speaker 1: you could put in in a miniature environment and pretend

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Speaker 1: that they were, you know, shrubbery or even trees. That's

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Speaker 1: really interesting because it also connects with a very fond

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Speaker 1: childhood memory that I have, which was that every Christmas,

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Speaker 1: my family would get out this little decorative tabletop manger scene,

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Speaker 1: which I have to admit I thought of kind of

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Speaker 1: like you would you would imagine a G. I. Joe

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Speaker 1: play set that's got the fortress or the base and

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Speaker 1: then the action figures that can inhabit it, and I

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Speaker 1: played with it in the same way I would have

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Speaker 1: like fights on the roof of the barn and all that.

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Speaker 1: But so it was a little wooden barn set, and

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Speaker 1: it had these plastic figurines of of course Mary and

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Speaker 1: Joseph and the sheep and the and the cows and

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Speaker 1: the wise men or the magi and the shepherds, and

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Speaker 1: then the wooden barn set how to kind of lichen

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Speaker 1: like material all over the roof, I guess for that

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Speaker 1: rustic Bethlehem feel I don't know if it was actually alive,

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Speaker 1: but I recall it it felt very lifelike, so it

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Speaker 1: may have been at some actual dried out lichen or

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Speaker 1: maybe actually moss like material. I'm not sure. Yeah, this

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Speaker 1: is interesting because in Christian theology, Jesus is said to

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Speaker 1: have a triple nature and in in other ways to like.

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Speaker 1: Even going back to medieval times, there are expressions of

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Speaker 1: Jesus's having this dual nature of both masculine and uh

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Speaker 1: and the feminine. But but in many ways, Jesus is

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Speaker 1: a composite being, so it's perfect that he's in there

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Speaker 1: amid the lichen. Oh. I like that very much. You

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Speaker 1: have the like in theology. Now, in terms of just

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Speaker 1: how widespread lin are, it's it's really amazing. I've read

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Speaker 1: it estimated that six percent of Earth's land surfaces covered

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Speaker 1: in liking, and I've also seen this number side it

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Speaker 1: as seven percent. But either way you shake it, that's

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Speaker 1: a lot of lichen. I think it's an It's a

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Speaker 1: type of life that we often think of just occupying

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Speaker 1: the cracks here and there, the rocks here and there.

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Speaker 1: We don't think about just how much like in there

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Speaker 1: is in the world. But one particular researcher who will

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Speaker 1: will come back too much later in the episode Uh

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Speaker 1: liking researcher by the name of Jin Peng Wong. In

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Speaker 1: a in a paper that I'll cite later on, he wrote,

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Speaker 1: Lichens are everywhere. If you go on a walk in

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Speaker 1: the city, the rough spots or gray spots you see

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Speaker 1: on rocks or walls or trees, those are common crust lichens.

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Speaker 1: On the ground, they sometimes look like chewing gum. And

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Speaker 1: if you go into a more pristine forest you can

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Speaker 1: find orange, yellow, and vivid violet colors. Lichens are really pretty.

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Speaker 1: I think he's kind of selling them short with that

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Speaker 1: last phrase, but it's hard to follow up. You know,

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Speaker 1: the poet with the scientists, but I think there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of poetry with what Wong has to say here. Well. Sure,

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Speaker 1: and you really do find an amazing aesthetic diversity within

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Speaker 1: the liking world. For example, there's a type of like

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Speaker 1: in that figures into a paper that we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about later that produces a toxin called vulpinic acid,

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Speaker 1: But it gives the like in this beautiful yellow green

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Speaker 1: color that makes me want to eat it, which is

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Speaker 1: exactly what I should not do. Yeah. Yeah, so some

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Speaker 1: like in our Our Toxic we'll touch on that as well. Um.

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Speaker 1: One of the other crazy things about like and is

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Speaker 1: that you will you will find them growing on every

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Speaker 1: continent on Earth. And and they're important species that they

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Speaker 1: grow on soil, rock and bark, but also on buildings

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Speaker 1: or even barnacles. As James Walton points out in likings

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Speaker 1: of the Arctic for the National Park Service, they'll even

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Speaker 1: grow on mountain tops in nunatos, which are the exposed

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Speaker 1: rock outcrops of ice fields. So they really thrive in

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Speaker 1: some some otherwise kind of desolate or challenging environments. And

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Speaker 1: and wherever they are they provide important food, shelter and

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Speaker 1: nesting material. They're important ecological players for hydrological and mineral cycles.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Arctic like in stores are specifically what's known

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Speaker 1: as reindeer like in or sometimes reindeer moss are in

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Speaker 1: a very important food source for migrating caribou, I think,

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Speaker 1: especially during the winter. Uh. And the fact that the

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Speaker 1: word moss comes up, I think it's important to mention

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Speaker 1: that that lichens are often associated somehow with moss. Many

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Speaker 1: types of lichen are called types of mosses for example,

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Speaker 1: reindeer moss, which is a lichen, but in scientific terms

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Speaker 1: like in and moss are are totally different types of

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Speaker 1: organisms because moss is one type of organism. Moss is

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Speaker 1: a plant, whereas lichen are living alliances of fungi and

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Speaker 1: meshed with tiny photosynthetic organisms for example algae which are plants,

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Speaker 1: or cyanobacteria, which are bacteria but which make food the

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Speaker 1: same way plants do by photosynthesis. Yes, sometimes you'll you'll

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Speaker 1: hear discussion of lichen in terms of lichen ized fungi um,

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Speaker 1: which which is which is maybe a little more precise

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Speaker 1: way of thinking about because again it just kind of

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Speaker 1: bucks traditional understanding that we're not looking at a single species,

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Speaker 1: we're looking at a composite. Yes, though it's interesting how

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Speaker 1: certain composites can behave like species in themselves. They have

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Speaker 1: like certain combinations of what's called the photo bion to

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Speaker 1: the part of the lichen that that does photosynthesis and

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Speaker 1: the micro bionto the major fungal components of the lien.

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Speaker 1: In certain combinations have particular characteristics that can be studied

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Speaker 1: like the characteristics of an individual species. Yeah, Now, in

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Speaker 1: terms of the species count, I've seen a number sided

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Speaker 1: as high as like twenty thousand different known species of lichens.

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Speaker 1: One of the more recent sources I looked up, though,

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Speaker 1: puts it more at five hundred. Uh. Either way, a

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Speaker 1: lot of lichens out there, uh, in the world. Now

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Speaker 1: we should we should probably back up a little bit

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Speaker 1: and point out that there was a time when scientists

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Speaker 1: thought lichen were plants. Later on, as Ed Young points

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Speaker 1: out in this wonderful Atlantic article titled how a guy

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Speaker 1: from a Montana trailer park overturned a hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: years of biology. Uh. And we'll get to the details

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Speaker 1: of that headline a bit, but uh, Young points out

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Speaker 1: that in eighteen sixty eight, a Swiss botanist named Simon

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Speaker 1: schwinden Or revealed the duel or composite nature of of liking.

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Speaker 1: But he believed that the fungus had quote head quote

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Speaker 1: enslaved the alga and this would of course proved not

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Speaker 1: to quite be the case. Now, a lot of you

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Speaker 1: are probably listening to this, and you already heard us

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Speaker 1: mentioned the idea of there being not two, but three

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Speaker 1: components in a liking. That that might come as a

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Speaker 1: shock to you because for a long time, uh, post

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Speaker 1: schwinden er, that's that's what we thought. You probably may

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Speaker 1: have learned this growing up, and in fact you'll probably

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Speaker 1: see it in a lot of not so old documentaries.

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Speaker 1: Um saying, you know, it's it's like a comic book scenario.

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Speaker 1: It's like a venom and Eddie Brock, you know, the

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Speaker 1: symbient in the human They come together and then they

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Speaker 1: become the comic book superhero slash villain. Yeah. I think

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Speaker 1: this used to be known as the dual hypothesis. There's

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Speaker 1: two species, they come together, and that's what the liking is.

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Speaker 1: But it turns out that there there may be more

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Speaker 1: parties involved, and there often are. Yeah. So for about

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Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years, Yeah, we thought lin consists

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Speaker 1: of a dual mutual relationship between an alga and a fungus.

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Speaker 1: You get the best of worlds, right. The alga's photo

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Speaker 1: is the photosynthesizing partner, or the photobiont, and uh, the

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Speaker 1: fungus is the microbiont, which makes up most of the

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Speaker 1: bulk of the of what we see. It's composed of

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Speaker 1: interwoven fungal filaments, and I think typically the idea is

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Speaker 1: that the fungal elements supplies stuff like structure, physical protection, shelter, minerals,

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Speaker 1: and water. Whereas the photobiont whether that's something like cyanobacteria

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Speaker 1: or a plant like an alga, that that provides the sugars.

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Speaker 1: It turns the sunlight in the carbon dioxide into the

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Speaker 1: sugars that feed the system. Now there were there ultimately

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Speaker 1: ended up being problems with this interpretation UM, and of

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Speaker 1: course part of it would be that we would ultimately

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Speaker 1: find out it's not just two things. But this was

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Speaker 1: revealed when say, scientists would would try bringing two identified

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Speaker 1: varieties of fungus an alga together to try and grow

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Speaker 1: lin in the lab. Uh, something seemed to be missing.

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Speaker 1: It was almost as if there was a third component

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Speaker 1: that was not present that was necessary for this UM

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Speaker 1: this combination to take place. Yeah, it was not easy

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Speaker 1: to to incubate lins from their components species in the lab,

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Speaker 1: at least not as we understood their component species. But

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Speaker 1: then in two sen so very recently UM a study

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Speaker 1: was published in the journal Science from researchers at the

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Speaker 1: University of Montana, working together with colleagues from Austria, Sweden

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Speaker 1: and Purdue University, and they found that some of the

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Speaker 1: world's mo common lichen r indeed composed not of two partners,

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Speaker 1: but three. And in this particular study, they were looking

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Speaker 1: at two closely related species of lichen in western Montana,

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Speaker 1: one toxic to mammals and the other not. Yeah, the

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Speaker 1: toxic one is the one that makes that poison I

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Speaker 1: referred to earlier vulpinic acid. The one that makes the

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Speaker 1: vulpinic acid is that gorgeous yellow green color, and the

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Speaker 1: one that doesn't make it as kind of a brown color. Apparently,

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Speaker 1: lichens containing vulpinic acid have at least allegedly been used

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Speaker 1: to poison wolves in the past. So you might bait

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Speaker 1: some meat with vulpinic acid lichen in order to to

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Speaker 1: kill the wolves. I guess if you were trying to

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Speaker 1: do that. Uh, don't kill wolves, folks. Yeah, but it

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Speaker 1: is interesting. We were able to work some uh some

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Speaker 1: lichens into our lichn episode here. Oh I see as

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Speaker 1: in Rise of the Likings. Oh yeah, I gotta share.

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Speaker 1: Before we recorded this, I was trying to google horror

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Speaker 1: movies about lichens to see if there were any like

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Speaker 1: spelling in the correct way l I C H E N.

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Speaker 1: But it was just bringing up underworld verse stuff, which

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Speaker 1: apparently is full of l y c a nds that

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Speaker 1: are that are their werewolf buddies. Yeah, Google, at times

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Speaker 1: and other search engines refused to believe that you're you're

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Speaker 1: actually searching for likings, which I think is a bit presumptuous.

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Speaker 1: I looked around a little bit too, and I could

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Speaker 1: not find any liking based horror films. But this is interesting.

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Speaker 1: Um the film or film adaptations of the Day of

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Speaker 1: the Triffids uh the novel by John Wyndham. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people probably know this one because there's a There's

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Speaker 1: their Killer plants in this book and in the movies

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Speaker 1: that are based on it. But Wyndham also wrote a

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Speaker 1: book I was reading. I have not read this, but

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Speaker 1: he has a nineteen sixty book titled Trouble with Liking,

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Speaker 1: and it's about a discovery that some sort of unusual

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Speaker 1: strain of lichen pink can be used to uh slow

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Speaker 1: down the aging process and enable people to live for centuries.

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Speaker 1: And then here's apparently a lot of speculation in the

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Speaker 1: novel about how this would affect society. Well, that's actually

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Speaker 1: interesting because there is a lot of research into secondary

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Speaker 1: metabolites produced by lichens as possible uh as possible candidates

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Speaker 1: for use in biotechnology and medicine. That you know, lichens

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Speaker 1: produce all kinds of interesting compounds that are of of

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Speaker 1: great interest too. I think, well, what's the term that

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Speaker 1: might be called? Like bioprospectors. Yeah, it's also my understanding

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Speaker 1: there have been some studies of certainly post in the

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Speaker 1: period after this book came out, that have looked at

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Speaker 1: potential anti aging um drugs that could be made from lichens. So,

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Speaker 1: I don't know, interesting topic one. Perhaps we'll have to

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Speaker 1: come back to in a future episode if everybody gets

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Speaker 1: liking fever from this one. Well, in fact, even a

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Speaker 1: minute ago, I was talking about that poison vulpinic acid

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Speaker 1: that is made by one of the likings that's in

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Speaker 1: the study, and even volpinic acid itself has been the

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Speaker 1: subject of a study about treating a throws sclerosis. I think, yeah, so, uh,

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Speaker 1: let's let's get back to those two likings from the study.

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Speaker 1: Though again, one of them is um uh is toxic

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Speaker 1: to mammals. The other is not. But here's the thing.

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Speaker 1: Previous DNA studies had ruled that the two species were

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Speaker 1: actually identical, and it was unknown why one was toxic

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Speaker 1: and the other was not. And this was seen another

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Speaker 1: liking as well, with other cases in which two types

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Speaker 1: of liking had the exact same symbiotic partners but differed

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Speaker 1: wildly in appearance in chemistry. So what was up? So

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Speaker 1: inter then University of Montana postdoctoral researcher Toby Spreebel, who

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Speaker 1: is now I believe with the University of Alberta, I think,

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Speaker 1: but he was the research lead on the study and

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Speaker 1: it was apparently, you know, quite a ground breaking study, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, using a lot of new technology and teaming

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Speaker 1: up with it wasn't just a Spreebel here, he was

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Speaker 1: teaming up with a very talented team including u M

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Speaker 1: University of Montana microbiologist John mcmccutcheon, who had worked with

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Speaker 1: a lot of insects indiosis studies in the past. All right,

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Speaker 1: so how do we get to that trifold nature? Okay,

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Speaker 1: So what they did is they did RNA analysis and

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Speaker 1: found two fungal species in the test lichens, and they

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Speaker 1: found that the toxic liking contained more of it the

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Speaker 1: secondary fungus and this would be the third component of

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Speaker 1: the of the lichen turned out to actually be a yeast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so the original assumption was that these likings were composed

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Speaker 1: of a partnership between the photo byant and then the

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Speaker 1: micro bion was believed to be entirely represented by this

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Speaker 1: group called the asco my seats, which is a certain

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Speaker 1: type of fungus. But instead what they found is there

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Speaker 1: were a bunch of other fungus genes being activated that

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Speaker 1: belonged to a group known as the basidio my seats. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and so one the crazy thing here is, Okay,

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Speaker 1: you hear about this and you think, okay, well, they

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Speaker 1: found a really interesting pair of lichen in Montana. Well

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Speaker 1: it doesn't stop there, though, because they started testing lichen

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Speaker 1: from around the world, and I mean from around the world,

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Speaker 1: including like Antarcticum varieties, and they revealed that this was

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Speaker 1: not an isolated phenomenon and in the words of McCutcheon,

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00:20:10,600 --> 00:20:12,760
Speaker 1: it was all quote hiding in plain sight for more

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Speaker 1: than a hundred years. Uh so, uh, it really did

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00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:20,280
Speaker 1: shake up everything we thought we knew about liking. Even

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Speaker 1: ruined some perfectly good poems. Oh yeah, because the poem well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if the poem is totally ruined,

355
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Speaker 1: but yeah, the Jane hirsh Field poem does sort of

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Speaker 1: envision the liking as a partnership between two and in fact,

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Speaker 1: it seems now that many lichens are a partnership between

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Speaker 1: at least two and include other elements as well, for example,

359
00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:44,399
Speaker 1: this yeast. And so when you look down at the

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Speaker 1: micro structure of a lichen, what's often going on is

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Speaker 1: that it's kind of loaf shaped, and then in the

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Speaker 1: interior of the loaf you've got a lot of fungal fibers,

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Speaker 1: and then on the exterior of the loaf you've got

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Speaker 1: this sort of crust, the structural cortex that has of

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00:21:00,359 --> 00:21:03,240
Speaker 1: course the photo bion element in there, which is doing

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Speaker 1: the photosynthesis, But then it also has these yeast elements

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Speaker 1: in the crust, and so what are they doing there?

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Speaker 1: What what purpose does the yeast serve? Well, I think

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Speaker 1: in a lot of cases it's not entirely clear yet. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: based on certainly based on the writings of the time,

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Speaker 1: and I think this holds true to today, is that

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Speaker 1: it's still kind of an open question what this These

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Speaker 1: new third partners are necessarily doing a lot of research

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00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 1: is ongoing and is still yet to be done to

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Speaker 1: figure out exactly how the lin really works. In light

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Speaker 1: of this revelation in the world's just almost always more

377
00:21:37,840 --> 00:21:41,400
Speaker 1: complicated than you thought. Yeah. Yeah, you push through one

378
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Speaker 1: door and then you just find out that there's another

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00:21:43,119 --> 00:21:46,160
Speaker 1: one that was just just a little uh further away

380
00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:49,000
Speaker 1: than you were able to glimpse. Yeah, well, should we

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Speaker 1: take a break and then come back to talk about

382
00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:57,159
Speaker 1: some like in history. Let's do it. Thank thank alright,

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00:21:57,200 --> 00:21:59,840
Speaker 1: we're back. So, uh, you know, an important question to

384
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Speaker 1: ask is how long have have lins been around? Well,

385
00:22:04,840 --> 00:22:06,919
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a more difficult question to

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00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:11,240
Speaker 1: answer than you might think because certainly the oldest for

387
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:15,959
Speaker 1: sure fossil likened data goes back to the early Devonian

388
00:22:16,240 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 1: um uh period. This would have been about four hundred

389
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Speaker 1: million years ago, and we have this evidence from a

390
00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:28,240
Speaker 1: sedimentary deposit called the Rheiny Church, unearthed near Aberdeen, Scotland. Now,

391
00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:31,320
Speaker 1: to call back to a past episode, uh, the Devonian

392
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:34,200
Speaker 1: was the age of prototax I d s and other

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00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:37,680
Speaker 1: strange land flora. So this is one of those those

394
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:40,439
Speaker 1: periods in uh, in Earth's history where it's it's a

395
00:22:40,480 --> 00:22:43,400
Speaker 1: it's an interesting exercise to just try to imagine yourself

396
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:47,040
Speaker 1: standing on those strange soils well, yeah, the Devonian was

397
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:49,040
Speaker 1: the age of fishes, but I think it was also

398
00:22:49,119 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: the time when we think that the the dry land

399
00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:57,160
Speaker 1: of Earth was first significantly populated by by plant life,

400
00:22:57,240 --> 00:23:00,399
Speaker 1: right right, right, So you know that, so we have

401
00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:02,760
Speaker 1: fossil evidence of lin from this time, and you know

402
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:06,200
Speaker 1: that the question is okay, well when did liken emerge? Now?

403
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:07,960
Speaker 1: One thing to stress about all of this is that

404
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:11,840
Speaker 1: fossil record of lin is not all that compelling. Most

405
00:23:11,920 --> 00:23:16,680
Speaker 1: liken dominated habitats such as tundras, deserts, mountaintops, they don't

406
00:23:16,680 --> 00:23:18,640
Speaker 1: produce a lot of fossils. And of course we also

407
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:23,440
Speaker 1: have to remember that the fossil record itself is inherently incomplete.

408
00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:26,760
Speaker 1: Not everything fossilizes, and and and as it turns out,

409
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,840
Speaker 1: like in are are less prone to fossilization. Yeah, the

410
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:33,880
Speaker 1: fossil record is not a clear indication of what existed.

411
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:37,280
Speaker 1: It often is biased in favor of what kinds of

412
00:23:37,320 --> 00:23:40,520
Speaker 1: things get fossilized easily and what you know, there are

413
00:23:40,560 --> 00:23:42,680
Speaker 1: certain steps that you have to go through in order

414
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:45,680
Speaker 1: to get fossilized. You have to often get buried quickly

415
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:49,840
Speaker 1: after death in certain types of soil and chemical soil conditions,

416
00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: so it's it's a finicky process. Yeah. Now, there there

417
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:56,920
Speaker 1: are some fossils from between two point two and two

418
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Speaker 1: point seven billion years ago that have at least in

419
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:03,840
Speaker 1: the path asked been interpreted by some as being likenised organisms.

420
00:24:03,840 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: But it's nothing that everyone agrees on. So um, so

421
00:24:07,840 --> 00:24:11,639
Speaker 1: we can't really we can't really dated back that far. Um.

422
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 1: But like can have certainly existed for hundreds of millions

423
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Speaker 1: of years. But we used to think that they were

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Speaker 1: even older, that they were perhaps even the earliest land organisms.

425
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Speaker 1: And this this has long been the conventional wisdom on lins,

426
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:26,960
Speaker 1: and it matches up with how they are frequently observed

427
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: to behave on our own world today. Um lichn is

428
00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:34,879
Speaker 1: often documented as an early colonizer of New Land. And

429
00:24:34,920 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 1: again they're capable of popping up in some really rugged

430
00:24:37,480 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 1: conditions again you know, mountain tops, bits of of rock

431
00:24:40,720 --> 00:24:43,880
Speaker 1: poking out of the frost, that sort of thing. Um.

432
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 1: So you know, it seems to match up with what

433
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:48,720
Speaker 1: we see. Uh. One example, I came across to give

434
00:24:48,840 --> 00:24:51,879
Speaker 1: like some some some sort of um, you know, human

435
00:24:52,359 --> 00:24:56,800
Speaker 1: level um. Uh, you know time stamps. The volcanic island

436
00:24:56,960 --> 00:25:01,400
Speaker 1: of Certaincy emerged in nineteen sixty three, and by nineteen

437
00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:05,000
Speaker 1: seventy lichens were found growing there. So I think that provides,

438
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:06,920
Speaker 1: you know, a sort of a rough timeline for how

439
00:25:07,040 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: this sort of thing might occur, not in the archaic since,

440
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:12,160
Speaker 1: but in you know, in our modern world, right, because

441
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,800
Speaker 1: at least in the modern world you already have liken

442
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:18,680
Speaker 1: symbiosis that exists. It doesn't have to evolve a new

443
00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 1: it just has to colonize the land. But it does

444
00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 1: colonize the land quite well. Yeah. Now, the most recent evidence,

445
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:31,199
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, um suggests that that this idea of lichen

446
00:25:31,320 --> 00:25:35,199
Speaker 1: as the first colonizer of of New Earth, Uh, that

447
00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:37,119
Speaker 1: this is not quite the case. I was reading a

448
00:25:37,119 --> 00:25:40,560
Speaker 1: wonderful two thousand nineteen New York Times article by Joanna

449
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 1: Klein on this, uh and uh. Basically in the idea

450
00:25:45,119 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 1: here is that likns may have made their way onto

451
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:51,000
Speaker 1: land some one d million years after ferns and other

452
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 1: vascular plants. And interestingly enough, this actually matches up, uh,

453
00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:58,359
Speaker 1: you know, to the extent that we can compare these

454
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:02,679
Speaker 1: two things with the data from certain cy that Volcanic Island,

455
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:06,680
Speaker 1: because vascular plants actually popped up there by nineteen sixty five,

456
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:09,879
Speaker 1: that's just two years after it emerged, and mosses by

457
00:26:09,960 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. But but to be clear, we do

458
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 1: observe lichens filling the role of first settlers in environment.

459
00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:20,560
Speaker 1: So it's it's not like it doesn't occur, um but uh.

460
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:23,920
Speaker 1: But anyway, based on the more recent evidence, it seems

461
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 1: that that lichens would have followed ferns and other vascular

462
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 1: plants on to the primordial Earth. Yeah, and it seems

463
00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:36,639
Speaker 1: especially apt to happen in certain types of extreme environments

464
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: where lichens are more well adapted than plants would be

465
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:43,280
Speaker 1: on their own, for example Arctic tundra. Yeah. Like one

466
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:45,000
Speaker 1: way of looking at it, and this was certainly part

467
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:49,080
Speaker 1: of the older interpretation is that lichen would grow where

468
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 1: plants could not, and they would make the environment more

469
00:26:51,600 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: hospitable than for vascular plants to move in. Okay, so

470
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:57,000
Speaker 1: that was the old theory, But maybe that might not

471
00:26:57,080 --> 00:26:59,440
Speaker 1: always be the case. That's right, because in two thousand

472
00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:02,679
Speaker 1: nineteen you had the study um uh from Nelson at

473
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:06,439
Speaker 1: all published in Geobiology that pushes the evolution of lichn

474
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: to two and fifty million years ago. But they also

475
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:13,800
Speaker 1: argue that different fun guy developed their alga hugging habits

476
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 1: independently and didn't inherit it from one main ancestor. But

477
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 1: it still remains a lot to be done in the

478
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: genomic study of likn. But but still it does seem

479
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: to point towards a a version of history in which

480
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:33,160
Speaker 1: lin follows the vascular plants follows the ferns. Right now,

481
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: this is all kind of a set up to the

482
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:37,640
Speaker 1: main question I had in the main paper that really

483
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 1: caught my interest here, revolving around this question, how did

484
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:44,400
Speaker 1: lichn fair when the dinosaurs died sixty six million years

485
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: ago in the Kati extinction event. This is a really

486
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:52,199
Speaker 1: interesting question because we've discussed on the show before the

487
00:27:52,320 --> 00:27:56,679
Speaker 1: role of fung gui by themselves in the aftermath of

488
00:27:56,720 --> 00:28:01,120
Speaker 1: the kat extinction. Specifically, the hypothesis us that fungi may

489
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,960
Speaker 1: have played a role in the evolving primacy of mammals

490
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,520
Speaker 1: in the food chain after the KPg extinction. Because if

491
00:28:08,600 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 1: you you have this period where um where much of

492
00:28:11,880 --> 00:28:14,239
Speaker 1: the sunlight is being blocked out, and so you have

493
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:17,280
Speaker 1: this earth that's just full of dead, rotting plant and

494
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,720
Speaker 1: animal matter, what's doing really well in a place full

495
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: of dead rotting animal and plant matter. It's fungus, right.

496
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: Fungus is the decomposer of the Earth. And so if

497
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 1: you've got planet fungus in the wake of this asteroid

498
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 1: impact or combination of asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions, what

499
00:28:36,480 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: survives well in the presence of an aggressive fungus dominated biosphere. Well,

500
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: apparently mammals in their warm blood do a lot better

501
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 1: at protecting their bodies from fungal infection than say, cold

502
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:53,520
Speaker 1: blooded reptiles do. Yeah. And another part of that too

503
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: is not only is the post Katie extinction world a

504
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 1: world full of dead things, it's also a world in

505
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: which the sky is darkened by the ash clouds, although

506
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: of what was probably a near Earth object impact, right,

507
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 1: I guess that that's what causes the dead things to

508
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: begin with. So I think that the commonly assumed cascade

509
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 1: is there's impact that darkens the skies, which which limits

510
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 1: the amount of sunlight available to the primary producers, such

511
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 1: as plants, so they all die off. The animals that

512
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:25,720
Speaker 1: eat the plants can't get enough food, so they start

513
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:28,239
Speaker 1: to die off. The animals that those animals can't get

514
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:30,600
Speaker 1: enough food, so they start to die off. And it's

515
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:34,400
Speaker 1: this trophic cascade of death creating a just you know,

516
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 1: an amazing buffet for the fungus of the earth. So

517
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 1: that this particular paper that looked into this two nineteen

518
00:29:42,280 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 1: study again just really driving home how much of our

519
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:47,880
Speaker 1: like in like really exciting like in work is happening

520
00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: right now. And and as ill as I'll touch on

521
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: two like this is a study that couldn't have taken

522
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 1: place just ten years ago. But this study was from

523
00:29:56,200 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: the Field Museum, um Cassette, Start University of him Young University,

524
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 1: and Academia Seneca, and they looked into this question that

525
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: the lead author was Jim Peng Wong, who I referenced earlier,

526
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 1: read a quote from him, a former postdoctoral researcher at

527
00:30:10,920 --> 00:30:13,920
Speaker 1: the Field Museum in Chicago. And so the idea here is, yeah,

528
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:17,479
Speaker 1: like we've been discussing, Katie, extinction of then occurs wipes

529
00:30:17,520 --> 00:30:20,080
Speaker 1: out the non avian dinosaurs, but also plenty of other

530
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: organisms as well, a lot of early birds. Um that

531
00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 1: they have that ash rising up into the sky blocking

532
00:30:25,880 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: out the sun. So photosynthetic organisms also suffered. Plant life

533
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,080
Speaker 1: was devastated on Earth. So Huong was curious about the

534
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 1: lichen Uh He and his team. They suspected that lichn

535
00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:40,400
Speaker 1: would have suffered as well given their relationship with the Sun. Again,

536
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: that's part of lichens whole thing is that they have

537
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:44,720
Speaker 1: the fungal element, but then they have the the alga

538
00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:46,520
Speaker 1: that that are also that are I mean, that are

539
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 1: capable of photosynthesis. But it comes back to the dual

540
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 1: nature of lichen, right because there, you know, there's the

541
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: photosynthetic aspect of of the of the life forms that

542
00:30:56,680 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 1: are good that would presumably suffer in this world. But

543
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: then there's the fungal ask becks that that might thrive. Um.

544
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:08,480
Speaker 1: So anyway, they decided to look into this. Uh, we've

545
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: already touched on the fact that fossil records show an

546
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,200
Speaker 1: increase in fungal smores. At this time, we know that

547
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: fungus was was getting to run amuck post KT extinction event.

548
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:21,000
Speaker 1: This is planet mold. You have planet mold. But when

549
00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 1: it comes to like and again like in fossils are

550
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: not common enough to really prop up a study like this,

551
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:29,320
Speaker 1: So most of this was based on modern Like in DNA,

552
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:34,600
Speaker 1: it involved identifying the mutation rate in species, determining common ancestors,

553
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: and they used to program to sort through these large

554
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 1: molecular data sets, and this is what Huong points out

555
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: is being just something that wouldn't have been possible ten

556
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:45,800
Speaker 1: years ago. And all of this is also backed up

557
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: by what fossil evidence we do have and um and

558
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 1: this was used to see, okay, when are we when

559
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: are we observing branching occurring among the liking and at

560
00:31:56,120 --> 00:31:58,960
Speaker 1: least for some like in families. The results of all

561
00:31:59,040 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 1: this point to a boom in liken populations after sixty

562
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:06,240
Speaker 1: six million years ago, So that's very interesting. Was that

563
00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: we have genetic evidence or genomic evidence of what was

564
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 1: going on with with liken species diversity in general, but

565
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily know all the reasons why. And there

566
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 1: would be some lingering questions, right like if if the

567
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 1: if plant life is suffering because of decreased access to

568
00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: the sun and so forth, wouldn't likens also be suffering

569
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 1: because they're also not getting the you know, the sunlight

570
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,960
Speaker 1: for the photosynthesis that makes their carbohydrates. But then of

571
00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: course you've got this fungus component in a world where

572
00:32:35,480 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: fungus is doing well. So yeah, it makes you wonder

573
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:40,160
Speaker 1: about the mechanisms at play. But it looks like at

574
00:32:40,200 --> 00:32:44,480
Speaker 1: least some species were doing really well and diversifying at

575
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: this time right now. Now, to be clear, some liken

576
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 1: definitely went extinct, and other lien seemed you know, they

577
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: seemed to be doing okay. You know, they weren't thriving,

578
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: but they weren't perishing. But interestingly enough, you did have

579
00:32:56,920 --> 00:33:00,200
Speaker 1: these families that thrived. Um now at Long points to

580
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: the fact that some lichens grow sophisticated three D structures

581
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 1: like plant leaves, and therefore it could have been these species,

582
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 1: he argues, that filled the niches of the plants that

583
00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: died out. So you have widespread, uh plant devastation that

584
00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: that creates an opportunity for certain savvy, composite organisms to

585
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 1: rise up and fill the void. That's really interesting. So

586
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: maybe after the dust clears, whatever's left might involve a

587
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: lot of lichens that suddenly have new opportunities to say,

588
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,440
Speaker 1: access sunlight, whereas previously there would have been plant cover

589
00:33:33,520 --> 00:33:36,400
Speaker 1: blocking them or something. Yeah, yeah, I think so. But again,

590
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 1: like you said, this is an area of very new

591
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,440
Speaker 1: stag nineteen. A lot of work still remains here, but

592
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 1: it is it is interesting. You have to think back

593
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: on this post extinction age and imagining, you know, at

594
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: its own pace, the lichen uh taking over alongside the mold. Yeah. Alright,

595
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:55,600
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,

596
00:33:55,720 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more liking. Alright, we're back.

597
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: So to finish out here today, I wanted to talk

598
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 1: briefly about a paper that I will admit caught my attention,

599
00:34:09,640 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: mainly just because it's brand new. It came out this summer,

600
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 1: and I was looking for recent like in research, and

601
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:18,399
Speaker 1: also because of a punny title. But it actually turned

602
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:20,759
Speaker 1: out to be very weird and interesting. So the paper

603
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:23,320
Speaker 1: I want to talk about was published in the journals

604
00:34:23,360 --> 00:34:30,920
Speaker 1: Symbiosis in July by Lucia Mugia, Polano's Allar Armando Azua

605
00:34:31,000 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: Bustos and Carlos Gonzales Silva, Martin Grube and Nina Gunde Simmerman,

606
00:34:36,920 --> 00:34:39,920
Speaker 1: and it is called The Beauty and the Yeast. Can

607
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:45,800
Speaker 1: the microalgae Donaliella form a borderline lichen with Jortea vernecki

608
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 1: i uh so? The authors here point out that, of course,

609
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 1: symbiotic relationships often allow organisms to survive in environments where

610
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:57,719
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to survive and proliferate at least

611
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,080
Speaker 1: not as well if they were on their own. And

612
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:02,479
Speaker 1: lichens are of course an example of this. You'll find

613
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:05,840
Speaker 1: like in thriving in environments where the microbiant and the

614
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 1: photobiont alone would face extreme challenges. But the question is

615
00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:13,799
Speaker 1: how do these relationships evolve in the first place. What

616
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:19,360
Speaker 1: gets these organisms working together and becoming a composite, becoming uh,

617
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:23,720
Speaker 1: just a partner within a symbiosis. The author's site previous

618
00:35:23,719 --> 00:35:27,600
Speaker 1: studies showing that like and thali meaning the physical structure

619
00:35:27,640 --> 00:35:29,680
Speaker 1: of the like and go back to the Lower Devonian

620
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 1: as we were talking about earlier. But there's still a

621
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: lot we don't know about how these alliances between organisms

622
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:39,600
Speaker 1: are formed in their earliest stages. They're surely interacting and

623
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:44,799
Speaker 1: forming relationships before they're actually building bodies together. And one

624
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 1: place where we can look for clues about the early

625
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:50,640
Speaker 1: stages of this evolutionary process is in what are known

626
00:35:50,680 --> 00:35:55,160
Speaker 1: as a borderline likens, which they define as quote species

627
00:35:55,200 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: associations showing a high degree of specialization, but without the

628
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 1: form a shin of well differentiated fungal layers characteristic of

629
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:08,320
Speaker 1: true lins. And one of the organisms that they're studying

630
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 1: here really melted my brain. I love this. Uh. It

631
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:14,560
Speaker 1: was first described in a study from two thousand ten

632
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 1: by Armando Azua Bustos see Gonzales, Silva, el solace, Ari Palma,

633
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:24,480
Speaker 1: and R. Vicuna. And this was a study published in

634
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 1: the journal Extreme of Files in two thousand ten. So

635
00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: the authors of the study describe a newly discovered species

636
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 1: of single celled alga in the genus Dunaliella. Now normally

637
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:40,800
Speaker 1: Dunaliella is a marine algae. They're they're tolerant of hyper

638
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 1: saline conditions, so you salt them like a slug. They

639
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,720
Speaker 1: don't really care. Uh. The scientific term for the ability

640
00:36:47,760 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: to live in really salty conditions is halo tolerance. By

641
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:54,120
Speaker 1: the way, don't salt a slug, You'll just make a

642
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 1: nath and you'll feel bad afterwards. Oh yeah, why why

643
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:58,560
Speaker 1: would you do that? How would you feel if a

644
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: slug salted you? Yeah? Uh So. Donaliella is a primary

645
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:06,800
Speaker 1: food source for a lot of filter feeders of plankton

646
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: in the ocean. Uh, and a few species can actually

647
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: be found in freshwater sources, but this genus has always

648
00:37:12,520 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: been known as a water dwelling class of organisms. You

649
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: find them in the water, and almost always in very

650
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: salty water. Well. The study in two thousand ten discovered

651
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: an exception here. Researchers described a species of Dunaliella found

652
00:37:28,960 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 1: on the walls of a cave in the Atacama Desert

653
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 1: of Chile. So one of the driest places in the world.

654
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,320
Speaker 1: How would the alga be surviving in a desert cave?

655
00:37:41,000 --> 00:37:42,440
Speaker 1: And at this point, I just want to read a

656
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 1: quote from the paper. Quote. On further inspection, we noticed

657
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 1: that it grows upon spider webs attached to the walls

658
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 1: of the entrance twilight transition zone of the cave. This

659
00:37:55,960 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: peculiar growth habitat suggests that this Dunaliella species uses air

660
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:05,600
Speaker 1: moisture condensing on the spider web silk threads as a

661
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: source of water for doing photosynthesis in the driest desert

662
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:15,279
Speaker 1: of the world. This process of adaptation recapitulates the transition

663
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: that allowed land colonization by primitive plants and shows an

664
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: unexpected way of expansion of the life habitability range by

665
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:29,399
Speaker 1: a microbial species. So whoe, I mean? So many things

666
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 1: interesting about this. So you're you're talking about a plant,

667
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 1: an alga that normally lives in the water. Now living

668
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: on land. Of course it needs sunlight to survive, but

669
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:44,960
Speaker 1: it lives in a cave. So how is this going

670
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: on while it's living on silk from spider web threads,

671
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 1: which you know, collects moisture from the fog in the air,

672
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,279
Speaker 1: and then it stays in the twilight transition zone of

673
00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:59,719
Speaker 1: the cave so it can still get some sunlight in

674
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: order to do photosynthesis. This is a This is a

675
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:07,359
Speaker 1: real cliffhanger of an organism. Yeah, yeah, I just I mean,

676
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: you know, most of us wouldn't think of, you know,

677
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 1: spider webs in the twilight realm of a cave. Uh.

678
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: And and and think to ourselves that's a that's a

679
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:20,200
Speaker 1: great place for some uh you know, of photosyn synthetic

680
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: organism to thrive. It's yeah, it's so strange. Yeah, but

681
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:28,319
Speaker 1: that's nature on the spider webs. So I love this.

682
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:32,120
Speaker 1: And anyway, this species is now known as Dunaliella at

683
00:39:32,120 --> 00:39:36,280
Speaker 1: a commensus. And to come back to this paper in symbiosis,

684
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: the authors note something else about this species of alga.

685
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:45,440
Speaker 1: It has been observed cuddling up to some fungus, specifically

686
00:39:45,480 --> 00:39:49,160
Speaker 1: another hallow tolerant organism, a fungus A kind of black

687
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: yeast called Hortatia vernecki i. So you would normally when

688
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: you look at these in these little dew drops of

689
00:39:57,520 --> 00:39:59,919
Speaker 1: water that are forming from the silk of a spy

690
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 1: fider web in this cave, you will find small colonies

691
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,879
Speaker 1: of algae of this species at at a commensus in

692
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: which you will find embedded cells of this black yeast verneckii.

693
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:17,160
Speaker 1: And as far as I can tell, there was no

694
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: previous evidence that these species were in a symbiotic relationship.

695
00:40:21,120 --> 00:40:24,840
Speaker 1: That they just appear to be huddling together, and finding

696
00:40:24,960 --> 00:40:29,000
Speaker 1: organisms in proximity to one another is not necessarily a

697
00:40:29,080 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: sign that they're symbiotic. You can think of examples, you know,

698
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 1: where you might find organisms together but not symbiotic in nature.

699
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: I think, for example, about different animal species that you

700
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: might find gathering around a savannah water source to drink.

701
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:47,359
Speaker 1: So if you have gazelles and elephants nearby each other

702
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 1: drinking water, they're not necessarily in a symbiotic relationship with

703
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:53,400
Speaker 1: each other. They just happen to be side by side

704
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 1: accessing a common resource. And so the question these authors

705
00:40:57,640 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 1: were looking into is, well, can we find any evidence

706
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,759
Speaker 1: that these species are actually in a mutualism that they're

707
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:09,120
Speaker 1: providing benefits to one another, and unfortunately the study encountered

708
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: problems where they were unable to get the algae to

709
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: grow properly in vitro. They actually tried a couple of

710
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 1: different algae, both at A Commensis and then another one

711
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:21,320
Speaker 1: known as de Selena, which they note as a common

712
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:25,839
Speaker 1: inhabitant of saltern brindes and salterns are pools of sea

713
00:41:25,880 --> 00:41:29,960
Speaker 1: water that can evaporate and leave crystal salt behind. But anyway,

714
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: so they had these these methodological problems trying to get

715
00:41:33,160 --> 00:41:36,080
Speaker 1: the algae to grow in the lab, and they discussed

716
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:39,960
Speaker 1: several possible reasons for this, including the possibility that the

717
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:45,080
Speaker 1: washing process of preparing the algae for in vitro incubation

718
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: may have removed some kind of vital environmental nutrient, or

719
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:52,919
Speaker 1: in keeping with the findings that we were talking about

720
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:56,160
Speaker 1: earlier from spree Bill and others, it may possibly have

721
00:41:56,280 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: removed some other crucial but yet unidentified microorganism partner. So

722
00:42:03,200 --> 00:42:06,400
Speaker 1: we still don't know if these organisms are involved in

723
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 1: what could be called a borderline like in relationship or not.

724
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,399
Speaker 1: The experiment was not able to establish evidence of any

725
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:15,279
Speaker 1: mutual benefit provided. But I do want to say I

726
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 1: always respect reading research that doesn't come to a conclusion

727
00:42:18,840 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: about its central question, but still publishes its findings, because,

728
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:26,520
Speaker 1: for example, discussion of the methodological problems they encountered could

729
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 1: be useful for other researchers who were trying to study

730
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah. Absolutely, And I guess it's easy

731
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:35,160
Speaker 1: to lose sight of the importance of that, especially in

732
00:42:35,200 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 1: a sort of headline driven science consumption, Right you want

733
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:43,200
Speaker 1: that especially We've already touched on some some some studies

734
00:42:43,239 --> 00:42:47,480
Speaker 1: that definitely hit that chord totally. So the question remains

735
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: about these species in particular. But I think this this

736
00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: is one fascinating picture of how the symbiotic relationships that

737
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:58,239
Speaker 1: create like and could potentially first evolve. You have two

738
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:01,920
Speaker 1: tiny organisms clinging to one another for drops of fog

739
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:05,800
Speaker 1: do collecting in a spider's web in a cave against

740
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:09,840
Speaker 1: the water starved desert, and perhaps eventually in these harsh

741
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,880
Speaker 1: conditions they could come to appreciate what they can do

742
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,799
Speaker 1: for one another in an evolutionary sense, But we we

743
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 1: don't always know how it happens. And that that's hammered

744
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,880
Speaker 1: home by another quote that was cited in ed Young's

745
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:25,360
Speaker 1: article that was from a researcher from the University of

746
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:30,240
Speaker 1: Exeter named Nick Talbot who's talking about lin and Talbot says, quote,

747
00:43:31,200 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: if the right combination meet together on a rock or twig,

748
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: then a lin will form and this will result in

749
00:43:37,440 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: a large and complex plant like organism that we see

750
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:44,920
Speaker 1: on trees and rocks very commonly. The mechanism by which

751
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 1: the symbiotic association occurs is completely unknown and remains a

752
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,840
Speaker 1: real mystery. I love it. I mean, so it happens

753
00:43:52,840 --> 00:43:55,040
Speaker 1: in nature all the time, we see it all over

754
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:57,560
Speaker 1: the world, but it's it seems to be kind of

755
00:43:57,560 --> 00:44:00,439
Speaker 1: scattershot as to whether we can recreate a in lab

756
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:05,280
Speaker 1: conditions or what all is needed to make the relationship work. Yeah,

757
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:10,320
Speaker 1: it's it's it's such a fascinating topic again. Um, liking

758
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,839
Speaker 1: are just so much more mysterious, uh and and been

759
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:17,520
Speaker 1: beautiful and complex, and we often give them credit. Um.

760
00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 1: I know during this trying time, those of us who

761
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: do have access to nature have you know, have probably

762
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: been taking more nature walks. I know, just based on

763
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:32,440
Speaker 1: my own famili's activities and on various friends that I uh,

764
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:34,319
Speaker 1: you know, say follow on on Instagram. I know I've

765
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,720
Speaker 1: noticed a lot of people exploring their their natural world

766
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:40,799
Speaker 1: a little bit more, getting into perhaps, uh you know,

767
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,759
Speaker 1: the chronicling mushrooms in their area. Mushroom hunting can be

768
00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:48,760
Speaker 1: a great deal of fun. But liken hunting uh also

769
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: something I think it's on the table right now. Go out,

770
00:44:51,600 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: Uh look for the liking. Um, you know, observe the

771
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:56,799
Speaker 1: like and heck, heck, if you want to take some

772
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 1: photos of liking and share them with us, uh, please

773
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: do so. We'll we'll tell you where you can email

774
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: us here in a bit. But also we have the

775
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: we have the old Facebook group, the discussion module, the

776
00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:08,720
Speaker 1: stuff to Wear your Mind discussion module. That's it seems

777
00:45:08,719 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: like a perfect place to drop some lik in photos. Yeah.

778
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,279
Speaker 1: Also frankenstein up your own like and see if you

779
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:16,520
Speaker 1: can do it? Can you incubate get some algae and

780
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:19,080
Speaker 1: some fungus together and just throw them into the mix.

781
00:45:19,120 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 1: See what happens. Yeah, that's a good beginner level, like

782
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 1: an experiment for your your quarantine day. It probably won't work,

783
00:45:26,520 --> 00:45:29,839
Speaker 1: but you know, it's always worth a try. All right, Well,

784
00:45:29,880 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 1: there you have it. Um as always, UM, you know,

785
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: you can find our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Uh.

786
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 1: And that goes without saying right wherever that happens to be.

787
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 1: If there's a way to rate us, to review us,

788
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:47,040
Speaker 1: to give us a nice you know, smattering of stars. Uh,

789
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: you appreciate that helps the show out allegedly. Um. But yeah,

790
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: if you just have some wonderful liking experiences, some li

791
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: in sightings, or even better, if you have a liking expertise.

792
00:45:59,280 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 1: Are you are are you are you a liking hunter,

793
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,160
Speaker 1: an amateur like and hunter? Are you yourself a lichnologist?

794
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:07,920
Speaker 1: Well then we would love to hear from you. Of course.

795
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:10,440
Speaker 1: Now we always want to say a huge thank you

796
00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. But if

797
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 1: you do want to get in touch with us, you

798
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: can email us as always at contact at stuff to

799
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:29,279
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind

800
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for

801
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:35,160
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

802
00:46:35,200 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows,