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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time

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Speaker 1: to go into the vault for a classic episode of

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Speaker 1: the show. This one originally aired September. It is called

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Speaker 1: Night of the Lichen Throbes like in L I C

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Speaker 1: H E N. Because this episode is about lichens. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: no monsters in this one, but lin are amazing. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There is amazing as as mini monsters. So this is

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Speaker 1: this is worth diving into for sure. Welcome to Sboot

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about lichens. That's right. I'm excited for

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Speaker 1: this one because the lichen are a type of life

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: thoughts might be about them. And we're continuing to learn

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

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

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Speaker 1: she was not actually aware that a likn 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 a

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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: sewn to a tree and they were just helping each

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Speaker 1: other out. Except 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. It

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

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Speaker 1: some other types of vines and things like that. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It it's really one of these um things in nature

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Speaker 1: that defies, uh, you know, our easy understanding of what

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Speaker 1: life even is, what does it mean to be a

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Speaker 1: species because we've touched you know, on the the composite

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Speaker 1: aspects of say even human biology that we depend on

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Speaker 1: microbes living inside us, etcetera. But like in it's it's

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Speaker 1: like a more pronounced expression of this same idea. There's

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Speaker 1: actually a wonderful quote from an article that we're going

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Speaker 1: to reference in this episode by Ed Young, one of

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Speaker 1: my favorite science writers in the Atlantic. That's about some

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Speaker 1: recent discoveries in like in biology, and ed rights quote.

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Speaker 1: When we think about the microbes that influence the health

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Speaker 1: of humans and other animals, the algae that provide coral

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Speaker 1: reefs with energy, the mitochondria that power ourselves, the gut

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Speaker 1: bacteria that allow cows to digest their food, or the

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Speaker 1: probiotic products that line supermarket shelves, all of that can

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Speaker 1: be traced to the birth of symbiosis as a concept,

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Speaker 1: and symbiosis in turn began with lichens. Yeah, that's that's

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Speaker 1: a great quote from a great article that will come

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Speaker 1: back to again here. But I understand you also have

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Speaker 1: 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, which is hair map lichen,

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Speaker 1: beard like in ground, like in shield lichen, which is

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Speaker 1: great because the title itself is almost like a line

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Speaker 1: from a Walt Whitman poem, but it has that Walt

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Speaker 1: Whitman's spirit. It's very it's very propulsively enthusiastic about the world.

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Speaker 1: And so in this poem she speaks about about lichen

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Speaker 1: and she calls them a marriage of fungi and algae,

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Speaker 1: chemists of the air, changers of nitrogen unusable into nitrogen usable.

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Speaker 1: And then her last couple of paragraphs in this poem

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Speaker 1: go like those nameless ones who kept painting, shaping, engraving, unseen, unread, unremembered,

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Speaker 1: not caring if they were no good, if they were

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Speaker 1: past it, rock wolves, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust,

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Speaker 1: ash of the woods, transformers, unvalued, uncounted, cell by cell,

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Speaker 1: word by word, making a world they could live in

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Speaker 1: that's really great. And that that comes that that that

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Speaker 1: kind of gets into something we'll touch on later too,

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Speaker 1: about this idea that Liken or some of the the

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Speaker 1: first settlers of new Lands, you know that they are

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Speaker 1: and they're the first to emerge on volcanic soils and

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Speaker 1: so forth. Yeah, And I like how she compares them

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Speaker 1: to sort of like unknown and unrecognized artists who in

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

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

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Speaker 1: never know the names of the author zoon 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 our teacher,

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

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Speaker 1: Uh that would more than one wonderful teacher in in

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Speaker 1: college poetry classes, but I specifically remember my teacher, Maryland

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Speaker 1: Collett would have us go out and and roam around,

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Speaker 1: find something natural and write a poem about it, you know,

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Speaker 1: which I think is a great exercise, uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: in in creativity. But it also is perfect for liking,

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Speaker 1: because I feel like I've always found something at least

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Speaker 1: soothing about moss and and and especially like and uh

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Speaker 1: and indeed something that that inspires poetry on some level,

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Speaker 1: even if you never actually righted. It kind of forces

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Speaker 1: a little poetic energy in the head because I remember

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Speaker 1: as a child, I loved like touching varieties of lichen

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Speaker 1: and moss. You know, we go out and scramble around

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Speaker 1: on the rocks, and when you scramble around on the rocks,

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Speaker 1: you're always finding uh, you know, remarkably new to you

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Speaker 1: alien life, little red um uh these little red arachnids

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Speaker 1: uh that are that are roaming around. And then also

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Speaker 1: you know, different types of lichens, sometimes beautifully colored. Uh.

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Speaker 1: I also love that lichn always had this this kind

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Speaker 1: of miniature world feel to them, something that was probably

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Speaker 1: compounded by the fact that my dad kept some miniature

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Speaker 1: railroad dried out lichen that that he would use for

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Speaker 1: like basing model tank kits and that sort of thing,

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Speaker 1: like little dried out lichens that you could put in

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Speaker 1: in a miniature environment and pretend that they were you know,

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Speaker 1: shrubbery or even trees. That's really interesting because it also

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Speaker 1: connects with a very fun childhood memory that I have,

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Speaker 1: which was that every Christmas, my family would get this

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Speaker 1: little decorative tabletop manger scene, which I have to admit

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Speaker 1: I thought of kind of like you would you would

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Speaker 1: imagine a G I. Joe play set that's got the

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Speaker 1: fortress or the base and then the action figures that

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Speaker 1: can inhabit it, and I played with it in the

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Speaker 1: same way I would have like fights on the roof

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Speaker 1: of the barn and all that. But so it was

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Speaker 1: a little wooden barn set, and it had these plastic

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Speaker 1: figurines of course Mary and Joseph, and the sheep and

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Speaker 1: the and the cows, and the wise men or the

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Speaker 1: magi and the shepherds, and then the wooden barn set

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Speaker 1: had a kind of lichen like material all over the roof.

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Speaker 1: I guess for that rustic Bethlehem feel. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if it was actually alive, but I recall it it

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Speaker 1: felt very lifelike, so it may have been at some

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Speaker 1: actual dried out lin or maybe actually moss like material.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Yeah, this is interesting because in Christian theology,

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Speaker 1: Jesus is said to have a triple nature and in

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Speaker 1: in other ways to like even going back to medieval times,

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Speaker 1: there are expressions of Jesus is having this dual nature

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Speaker 1: of both masculine and uh and the feminine. But but

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Speaker 1: in many ways Jesus is a composite being, so it's

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Speaker 1: perfect that he's in there amid the liking. Oh, I

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Speaker 1: like that very much. You have the like in theology

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Speaker 1: now in terms of of just how widespread lin ore,

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Speaker 1: it's it's really amazing. I've read it estimated that six

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Speaker 1: percent of Earth's land surfaces covered in a liking, and

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Speaker 1: I've also seen this number sided is seven percent. But

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Speaker 1: either way you shake it, that's a lot of liking.

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Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a it's a type of

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Speaker 1: life that we often think of just occupying the cracks

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Speaker 1: here and there, the rocks here and there. We don't

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Speaker 1: think about just how much liking there is in the world.

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Speaker 1: But one particular researcher who will will come back too

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Speaker 1: much later in the episode Uh liking researcher by the

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Speaker 1: name of Jin Peng Wong in a in a paper

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Speaker 1: that I'll cite later on, he wrote, likings are everywhere.

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Speaker 1: If you go on a walk in the city, the

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Speaker 1: rough spot or gray spots you see on rocks or

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

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Speaker 1: They sometimes look like chewing gum, And if you go

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Speaker 1: into a more pristine forest you can find orange, yellow,

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Speaker 1: and vivid violet colors. Lichens are really pretty. I think

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Speaker 1: he's kind of selling them short with that last phrase.

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Speaker 1: But it's hard to follow up, you know, the poet

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Speaker 1: with the scientists. But I think there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: poetry with what Long has to say here. Well. Sure,

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

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

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Speaker 1: lichen 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, yeah, so

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Speaker 1: some like in our our toxic we'll touch on that

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Speaker 1: as well. Um. One of the other crazy things about

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Speaker 1: lin is that you will you will find them grow

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Speaker 1: going on every continent on Earth, and and they're important

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Speaker 1: species that they grow on soil, rock and bark, but

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Speaker 1: also on buildings or even barnacles. As James Walton points

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Speaker 1: out in likings of the Arctic for the National Park Service,

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Speaker 1: they'll even grow on mountain tops in nunataks, which are

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Speaker 1: the exposed rock outcrops of ice fields, so that they

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Speaker 1: really thrive in some some otherwise kind of desolate or

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

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

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Speaker 1: mineral cycles. Oh yeah, Arctic like in stores are specifically

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Speaker 1: what's known as reindeer like in or sometimes reindeer moss

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Speaker 1: are in a very important food source for migrating caribou,

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Speaker 1: I think, especially during the winter. Uh. And the fact

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Speaker 1: that the word moss comes up, I think it's important

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Speaker 1: to mention that that likings are often associated somehow with moss.

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Speaker 1: Many types of like and are called types of mosses,

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Speaker 1: for example reindeer moss, which is a lichen, but in

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Speaker 1: scientific terms, liken and moss are are totally different types

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

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Speaker 1: is a plant, whereas like in our living alliances of

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Speaker 1: fungi and meshed with tiny photosynthetic organisms for example algae

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Speaker 1: which are plants, or cyanobacteria, which are bacteria but which

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Speaker 1: make food the same way plants do by photosynthesis. Yes,

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Speaker 1: sometimes you'll you'll hear discussion of lichen in terms of

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Speaker 1: lichen ized fungi um, which which is which is maybe

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Speaker 1: a little more precise way of thinking about because again,

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Speaker 1: it just kind of bucks traditional understanding that we're not

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Speaker 1: looking at a single species, we're looking at a composite. Yes, though,

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Speaker 1: it's interesting how certain composites can behave like species in themselves.

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Speaker 1: They have like certain combinations of what's called the photo

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Speaker 1: bion to the part of the like in that does

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Speaker 1: photosynthesis and the micro bionto the major fungal components of

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Speaker 1: the lien in. Certain combinations have particular characteristics that can

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

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

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Speaker 1: sided as high as like twenty thousand different known species

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: details of that headline a bit, but 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, he's a comic

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Speaker 1: book scenario. It's like a venom and Eddie Brock, you know,

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Speaker 1: the symbient and the human. They come together and then

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

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Speaker 1: think this used to be known as the dual hypothesis.

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Speaker 1: There's two species, they come together, and that's what the

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Speaker 1: liking is. But it turns out that there there may

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Speaker 1: be more parties involved, and there often are. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: for about a hundred and fifty years, Yeah, we thought

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Speaker 1: lichen consists of a dual mutual relationship between an alga

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Speaker 1: and a fungus. You get the best of worlds, right.

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Speaker 1: Alga's photo is the photosynthesizing partner, or the photobiont, and

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

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

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Speaker 1: composed of interwoven fungal filaments. And I think typically the

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Speaker 1: idea is that the fungal elements supplies stuff like structure,

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Speaker 1: physical protection, shelter, minerals, and water, whereas the photobiont, whether

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Speaker 1: that's something like cyanobacteria or a plant like an alga, uh,

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Speaker 1: that that provides the sugars. It turns the sunlight and

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Speaker 1: the carbon dioxide into the sugars that feed the system. Now,

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Speaker 1: there were there ultimately ended up being problems with this

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Speaker 1: interpretation um, and of course part of it would be

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Speaker 1: that we would ultimately find out it's not just two things.

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Speaker 1: But this was revealed when say scientists would would try

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Speaker 1: bringing two identified varieties of fungus an alga together to

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Speaker 1: try and grow liken in the lab. Uh, something see

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Speaker 1: semed to be missing. It was almost as if there

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Speaker 1: was a third component that was not present that was

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Speaker 1: necessary for this um this combination to take place. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was not easy to to incubate lichens from their

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Speaker 1: components species in the lab, at least not as we

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Speaker 1: understood their component species. But then in two so very

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Speaker 1: recently UM a study was published in the journal Science

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Speaker 1: from researchers at the University of Montana, working together with

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Speaker 1: colleagues from Austria, Sweden, and Purdue University, and they found

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Speaker 1: that some of the world's most common liking are indeed

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Speaker 1: composed not of two partners, but three. And in this

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Speaker 1: particular study, they were looking at two closely related species

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Speaker 1: of lichen in western Montana, one toxic to mammals and

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Speaker 1: the other not. Yeah, the toxic one is the one

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Speaker 1: that makes that poison I referred to earlier vulpinic acid.

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Speaker 1: The one that makes the vulpinic acid is that gorgeous

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Speaker 1: yellow green color, and the one that doesn't make it

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Speaker 1: as kind of a brown or Apparently, lichens containing vulpinic

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Speaker 1: acid have at least allegedly been used to poison wolves

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Speaker 1: in the past, so you might bait some meat with

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Speaker 1: vulpinic acid lichen in order to to kill the wolves.

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Speaker 1: I guess if you were trying to do that. Uh,

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Speaker 1: don't kill wolves, folks. Yeah, but it is interesting. We

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Speaker 1: were able to work some uh, some lichens into our

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Speaker 1: Lin episode here. Oh I see as in Rise of

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Speaker 1: the Lins. Oh yeah, I gotta share. Before we recorded this,

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Speaker 1: I was trying to google horror movies about lichens to

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Speaker 1: see if there were any like spelling in the correct

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Speaker 1: way l I c h E N. But it was

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Speaker 1: just bringing up underworld verse stuff, which apparently is full

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Speaker 1: of l y c A n's that are that are

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Speaker 1: their werewolf buddies. Yeah, Google, at times and other search

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Speaker 1: engines refused to believe that you're you're actually searching for lichens,

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Speaker 1: which I think is a bit presumptuous. I looked around

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Speaker 1: a little bit too, and I could not find any

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Speaker 1: lichen based horror films. But this is interesting. Um the

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: killer plants in this book and in the movies that

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

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

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

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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 he there's apparently a lot of speculation in

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: candidates for use in biotechnology and medicine. 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 BioProspector 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 the 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,

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Speaker 1: so let's let's get back to those two lichens from

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Speaker 1: the study. Though again one of them is um uh

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Speaker 1: is toxic to mammals, the other is not. But here's

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Speaker 1: the thing. Previous DNA studies had ruled that the two

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

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Speaker 1: was toxic and the other was not. And this was

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Speaker 1: seen another liking as well with other cases in which

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Speaker 1: two types of lichen had the exact same symbiotic partners

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: I think, but he was the research lead on the

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

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Speaker 1: breaking study, uh, you know, using a lot of new

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Speaker 1: technology and teaming up with it wasn't just a spreebel here.

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Speaker 1: He was teaming up with a very talented team including

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Speaker 1: u M University of Montana microbiologist John mcmccutcheon, who had

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Speaker 1: worked with a lot of insects inmbiosis studies in the past.

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Speaker 1: All right, 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 likings, 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 liking turned out to actually be a yeast. Yes.

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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 byant 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 on. 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 lien in Montana. Well

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Speaker 1: it didn'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 antarctic Um varieties, and they revealed that this

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

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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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Speaker 1: shake up everything we thought we knew about liking, even

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00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:59,119
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,

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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, when in fact,

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

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

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Speaker 1: this yeast. And so when you look down at the

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Speaker 1: micro structure of a liking, 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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Speaker 1: course the photo biond 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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00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:49,280
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 and I think this holds true to today, is

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

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

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00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:04,960
Speaker 1: research is ongoing and is still yet to be done

387
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,240
Speaker 1: to figure out exactly how the liking really works in

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00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:11,040
Speaker 1: a light of this revelation in the world's just almost

389
00:22:11,080 --> 00:22:14,800
Speaker 1: always more complicated than you thought. Yeah, yeah, you pushed

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00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:16,399
Speaker 1: through one door and then you just find out that

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00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:19,280
Speaker 1: there's another one that was just just a little uh

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Speaker 1: further away than you were able to the glimpse. Yeah, well,

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00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 1: should we take a break and then come back to

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Speaker 1: talk about some like in history. Let's do it. Thank

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00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:32,879
Speaker 1: thank thank Alright, we're back. So, uh, you know, an

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00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:36,719
Speaker 1: important question to ask is how long have have Lin's

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00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:39,880
Speaker 1: been around? Well, it's a it's a it's a more

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00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:43,440
Speaker 1: difficult question to answer than you might think, because certainly

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Speaker 1: the oldest for sure fossil like in data goes back

400
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Speaker 1: to the early Devonian um UH period. This would have

401
00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:54,879
Speaker 1: been about four hundred million years ago, and we have

402
00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:59,080
Speaker 1: this evidence from a sedimentary deposit called the Rheiny Church

403
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:02,720
Speaker 1: under near Aberdeen, Scotland. Now, to call back to a

404
00:23:02,760 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 1: past episode, uh, the Devonian was the age of prototax

405
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:10,280
Speaker 1: i d s and other strange land flora. So this

406
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:13,000
Speaker 1: is one of those those periods in UH in Earth's

407
00:23:13,040 --> 00:23:15,639
Speaker 1: history where it's it's a it's an interesting exercise to

408
00:23:15,720 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 1: just try to imagine yourself standing on those strange soils. Well, yeah,

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00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: the Devonian was the age of fishes, but I think

410
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Speaker 1: it was also the time when we think that the

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00:23:25,520 --> 00:23:30,119
Speaker 1: the dry land of Earth was first significantly populated by

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00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:33,960
Speaker 1: by plant life, right right, right, So you know, so

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Speaker 1: we have fossil evidence of lin from this time, and

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00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 1: the you know that the question is, okay, well when

415
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:41,240
Speaker 1: did liken emerge? Now? One thing to stress about all

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Speaker 1: of this is that fossil record of lin is not

417
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Speaker 1: all that compelling. Most Liken dominated habitats such as tundras

418
00:23:48,359 --> 00:23:51,760
Speaker 1: deserts mountaintops, they don't produce a lot of fossils. And

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Speaker 1: of course we also have to remember that the fossil

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Speaker 1: record itself is inherently incomplete. Not everything fossilizes, and and

421
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: and it's turns out like in are are less prone

422
00:24:02,240 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 1: to fossilization. Yeah, the fossil record is not a clear

423
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 1: indication of what existed. It often is biased in favor

424
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: of what kinds of things get fossilized easily and what

425
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 1: you know, there are certain steps that you have to

426
00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:17,639
Speaker 1: go through in order to get fossilized. You have to

427
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: often get buried quickly after death in certain types of

428
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 1: soil and chemical soil conditions. So it's it's a finicky process. Yeah. Now,

429
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:30,439
Speaker 1: there there are some fossils from between two point two

430
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:33,159
Speaker 1: and two point seven billion years ago that have at

431
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,120
Speaker 1: least in the past been interpreted by some as being

432
00:24:36,200 --> 00:24:41,120
Speaker 1: likenised organisms, but it's nothing that everyone agrees on so um,

433
00:24:41,520 --> 00:24:44,040
Speaker 1: so we can't really we can't really dated back that

434
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 1: far um, but like can have certainly existed for hundreds

435
00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: of millions of years, but we used to think that

436
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:52,480
Speaker 1: they were even older, that they were perhaps even the

437
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: earliest land organisms. And this This has long been the

438
00:24:56,320 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom on lins, and it matches up with how

439
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: they are free equently observed to behave on our own

440
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:06,520
Speaker 1: world today. UM. Lichen is often documented as an early

441
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 1: colonizer of new Land, and again they're capable of popping

442
00:25:10,040 --> 00:25:13,120
Speaker 1: up in some really rugged conditions. Again you know, mountaintops,

443
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: bits of of rock poking out of the frost, that

444
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:18,840
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um. So, you know, it seems to

445
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: match up with what we see. Uh. One example, I

446
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 1: came across to give like some some some sort of

447
00:25:24,960 --> 00:25:29,160
Speaker 1: you know, human level um uh, you know, time stamps.

448
00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 1: The volcanic island of Certaincy emerged in nineteen sixty three,

449
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 1: and by nineteen seventy lichens were found growing there. So

450
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: I think that provides, you know, sort of a rough

451
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:42,679
Speaker 1: timeline for how this sort of thing might occur, not

452
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:44,360
Speaker 1: in the archaic since, but in you know, in our

453
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:47,280
Speaker 1: modern world, right, because at least in the modern world

454
00:25:47,320 --> 00:25:50,560
Speaker 1: you already have, like in symbiosis that exists. It doesn't

455
00:25:50,560 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 1: have to evolve a new it just has to colonize

456
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:58,520
Speaker 1: the land. But it does colonize the land quite well. Yeah. Now,

457
00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:03,480
Speaker 1: the most recent evidence, interestingly enough, um suggest that that

458
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:07,639
Speaker 1: this idea of lichen as the first colonizer of of

459
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,080
Speaker 1: New Earth. Uh, that this is not quite the case.

460
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:12,880
Speaker 1: I was reading a wonderful two thousand nineteen New York

461
00:26:12,880 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: Times article by Johanna Klein on this. Uh and uh.

462
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:20,399
Speaker 1: Basically in the idea here is that likns may have

463
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 1: made their way on to land some one hundred million

464
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 1: years after ferns and other vascular plants. And interestingly enough,

465
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 1: this actually matches up, uh, you know, to the extent

466
00:26:31,400 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: that we can compare these two things with data from

467
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:38,199
Speaker 1: certain cy h that Volcanic Island, because vascular plants actually

468
00:26:38,240 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 1: popped up there by nineteen sixty five, that's just two

469
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,879
Speaker 1: years after it emerged, and mosses by nineteen sixty seven.

470
00:26:45,280 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 1: But but to be clear, we do observe lins filling

471
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:50,919
Speaker 1: the role of first settlers in environments, so it's it's

472
00:26:50,960 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: not like it doesn't occur. Uh. But uh. But anyway,

473
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 1: based on the more recent evidence, it seems that that

474
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:02,520
Speaker 1: lichens would have followed ferns and other vascular plants on

475
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 1: to the primordial Earth. Yeah, and it seems especially apt

476
00:27:07,720 --> 00:27:11,200
Speaker 1: to happen in certain types of extreme environments where lichens

477
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: are more well adapted than plants would be on their own,

478
00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 1: for example, Arctic tundra. Yeah. Likely one way of looking

479
00:27:17,640 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: at it, and this was certainly part of the older

480
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 1: interpretation is that lichen would grow where plants could not,

481
00:27:23,880 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 1: and they would make the environment more hospitable than for

482
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: vascular plants to move in. Okay, so that was the

483
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 1: old theory. But maybe that might not always be the case.

484
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:33,920
Speaker 1: That's right, because in two thousand nineteen you have to

485
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:38,360
Speaker 1: study um uh from Nelson at All published in Geobiology

486
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: that pushes the evolution of lichen to two and fifty

487
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,720
Speaker 1: million years ago. But they also argue that different fungi

488
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:49,679
Speaker 1: developed their alga hugging habits independently and didn't inherit it

489
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:52,880
Speaker 1: from one main ancestor. But it still remains a lot

490
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 1: to be done in the genomic study of likn. But

491
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: but still it does seem to point towards a a

492
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: version of history in which lin follows the vascular plants

493
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: follows the ferns. All right, Now, this is all kind

494
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,360
Speaker 1: of a set up to the main question I had

495
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: in the main paper that really caught my interest here,

496
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: revolving around this question, how did lichn fair when the

497
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,520
Speaker 1: dinosaurs died sixty six million years ago in the KT

498
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,880
Speaker 1: extinction event. This is a really interesting question because we've

499
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 1: discussed on the show before the role of fungi by

500
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 1: themselves in the aftermath of the KT extinction, specifically the

501
00:28:32,880 --> 00:28:36,239
Speaker 1: the hypothesis that fungi may have played a role in

502
00:28:36,440 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: the evolving primacy of mammals in the food chain after

503
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: the KPg extinction. Because if you you have this period

504
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 1: where um where much of the sunlight is being blocked out,

505
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:49,360
Speaker 1: and so you have this Earth that is just full

506
00:28:49,400 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 1: of dead, rotting plant and animal matter. What's doing really

507
00:28:53,320 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: well in a place full of dead, rotting animal and

508
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 1: plant matter. It's fungus, right, new Fungus is the decomposer

509
00:28:59,840 --> 00:29:03,320
Speaker 1: of the Earth. And so if you've got planet fungus

510
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 1: in the wake of this asteroid impact or combination of

511
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 1: asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions, what survives well in the

512
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 1: presence of an aggressive fungus dominated biosphere. Well, apparently mammals

513
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: in their warm blood do a lot better at protecting

514
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 1: their bodies from fungal infection than say, cold blooded reptiles do. Yeah,

515
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: And another part of that too, is not only is

516
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:33,120
Speaker 1: the post Katie extinction world a world full of dead things.

517
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: It's also a world in which the sky is darkened

518
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 1: by the ash clouds al though of what was probably

519
00:29:39,840 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: a near Earth object impact, Right, I guess that that's

520
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:44,520
Speaker 1: what causes the dead things to begin with. So I

521
00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:47,920
Speaker 1: think that the commonly assumed cascade is there's impact that

522
00:29:48,040 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 1: darkens the skies, which which limits the amount of sunlight

523
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: available to the primary producers such as plants, so they

524
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: all die off. The animals that eat the plants can't

525
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:00,720
Speaker 1: get enough food, so they start to die off. The animals.

526
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 1: Those animals can't get enough food, so they start to

527
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: die off. And it's this trophic cascade of death creating

528
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 1: a just you know, an amazing buffet for the fungus

529
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: of the earth. So that this particular paper that looked

530
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: into this two thousand nineteen study again just really driving

531
00:30:18,120 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 1: home how much of our like in like really exciting

532
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: like in work is happening right now. And and as

533
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:25,400
Speaker 1: ill as I'll touch on two like this is a

534
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:28,640
Speaker 1: study that couldn't have taken place just ten years ago.

535
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: But this study was from the Field Museum, um uh

536
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 1: Cassette Start University, Brigham Young University in Academia, Seneca, and

537
00:30:37,200 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: they looked into this question that the lead author was

538
00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 1: Jim Peng Wong, who I referenced earlier read a quote

539
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: from him, a former postdoctoral researcher at the Field Museum

540
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 1: in Chicago. And so the idea here is, yeah, like

541
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: we've been discussing Katie, extinction of then occurs wipes out

542
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: the non avian dinosaurs, but also plenty of other organisms

543
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: as well, a lot of early birds. Um that they

544
00:30:57,720 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: have that ash rising up into the sky blocking out

545
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:03,720
Speaker 1: the son. So photosynthetic organisms also suffered. Plant life was

546
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:07,280
Speaker 1: devastated on Earth. So Huong was curious about the Lichen

547
00:31:07,760 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: uh He and his team they suspected that likin would

548
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: have suffered as well, given their relationship with the sun. Again,

549
00:31:14,280 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: that's part of Lichen soule thing is that they have

550
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 1: the fungal element, but then they have the the algae

551
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: that that are also that are I mean there are

552
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: capable of photosynthesis. But it comes back to the dual

553
00:31:23,520 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 1: nature of liking, right because there you know, there's the

554
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:30,440
Speaker 1: photosynthetic aspect of of the of the life forms that

555
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:32,720
Speaker 1: are good that would presumably suffer in this world. But

556
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: then there's the fungal aspects that that might thrive. UM.

557
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: So anyway, they decided to look into this. Uh, we've

558
00:31:42,320 --> 00:31:44,520
Speaker 1: already touched on the fact that fossil records show an

559
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 1: increase in fungal smores at this time. We know that

560
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:51,520
Speaker 1: fungus was was getting to run amuck post Katie extinction event.

561
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 1: This is planet mold. You have planet mold. But when

562
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: it comes to like and again, Lichen fossils are not

563
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,239
Speaker 1: common enough to really prop up a study like this,

564
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:03,160
Speaker 1: So most of this was based on modern like in DNA,

565
00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 1: it involved identifying the mutation rate in species, determining common ancestors,

566
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: and they used a program to sort through these large

567
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 1: molecular data sets. And this is what Huong points out

568
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: is being just something that wouldn't have been possible ten

569
00:32:16,960 --> 00:32:19,600
Speaker 1: years ago. And all of this is also backed up

570
00:32:19,600 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 1: by what fossil evidence we do have and um, and

571
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:25,840
Speaker 1: this was used to see, okay, when are we when

572
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 1: are we observing branching occurring among the Lichen and at

573
00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,760
Speaker 1: least for some like in families. The results of all

574
00:32:32,840 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: this point to a boom in like in populations after

575
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:40,000
Speaker 1: sixty six million years ago. So that's very interesting. Was

576
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: so we have genetic evidence or genomic evidence of what

577
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: was going on with with like in species diversity in general,

578
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:50,560
Speaker 1: but we don't necessarily know all the reasons why, and

579
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 1: there would be some lingering questions, right like if if

580
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: the if plant life is suffering because of decreased access

581
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:59,240
Speaker 1: to the sun and so forth, wouldn't likens also be

582
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: suffering because as they're also not getting the you know,

583
00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:06,480
Speaker 1: the sunlight for the photosynthesis that makes their carbohydrates. But

584
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: then of course you've got this fungus component in a

585
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: world where fungus is doing well. So yeah, it makes

586
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 1: you wonder about the mechanisms at play. But it looks

587
00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 1: like at least some species were doing really well and

588
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 1: diversifying at this time right now. Now, to be clear,

589
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 1: some lichend definitely went extinct, and other lichen seemed, you know,

590
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: they seem to be doing okay. You know, they weren't thriving,

591
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 1: but they weren't perishing. But interestingly enough, you did have

592
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:34,000
Speaker 1: these families that thrived. Um now a long points to

593
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:37,400
Speaker 1: the fact that some lichens grow sophisticated three D structures

594
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:41,520
Speaker 1: like plant leaves, and therefore it could have been these species,

595
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: He argues that filled the niches of the plants that

596
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: died out. So you have widespread uh plant devastation that

597
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: that creates an opportunity for certain savvy composite organisms to

598
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 1: rise up and fill the void. That's really interesting. So

599
00:33:56,320 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: maybe after the dust clears, whatever is left might involve

600
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:03,840
Speaker 1: a lot of likings that suddenly have new opportunities to say,

601
00:34:03,880 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 1: access sunlight, whereas previously there would have been plant cover

602
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: blocking them or something. Yeah, yeah, I think so. But again,

603
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 1: like you said, this is an area of very new

604
00:34:12,719 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 1: state nineteen. A lot of work still remains here, but

605
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:18,399
Speaker 1: it is it is interesting. You have to think back

606
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: on this post extinction age and imaging, you know, at

607
00:34:22,280 --> 00:34:27,840
Speaker 1: its own pace, the liking uh taking over alongside the mold. Yeah. Alright.

608
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 1: On that note, we're going to take a quick break,

609
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:35,880
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more liking. Thank thank Alright,

610
00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: we're back. So to finish out here today, I wanted

611
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,840
Speaker 1: to talk briefly about a paper that I will admit

612
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: caught my attention, mainly just because it's brand new. It

613
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 1: came out this summer and I was looking for recent

614
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:50,720
Speaker 1: like in research, and also because of a penny title,

615
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 1: but it actually turned out to be very weird and interesting.

616
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 1: So the paper I want to talk about was published

617
00:34:56,480 --> 00:35:02,839
Speaker 1: in the journals Symbiosis in July by Lucia Mugia Polano's

618
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 1: Allar Armando Azua Bustos and Carlos Gonzales Silva Martin Grube

619
00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:12,400
Speaker 1: and Nina Gunde Simmerman, and it is called The Beauty

620
00:35:12,520 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: and the Yeast. Can the microalgae Dounaliella form a borderline

621
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 1: lichen with Jortea vernecki i uh so? The authors here

622
00:35:22,520 --> 00:35:26,440
Speaker 1: point out that, of course, symbiotic relationships often allow organisms

623
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:29,480
Speaker 1: to survive in environments where they wouldn't be able to

624
00:35:29,480 --> 00:35:32,560
Speaker 1: survive and proliferate at least not as well if they

625
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:35,120
Speaker 1: were on their own, and lichens are of course an

626
00:35:35,160 --> 00:35:37,880
Speaker 1: example of this. You'll find like in thriving in environments

627
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: where the microbiant and the photobiont alone would face extreme challenges.

628
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,480
Speaker 1: But the question is how do these relationships evolve in

629
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 1: the first place? What gets these organisms working together and

630
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:55,600
Speaker 1: becoming a composite, becoming uh just a partner within a symbiosis.

631
00:35:56,360 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 1: The author's site previous studies showing that, like in thali

632
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:02,399
Speaker 1: meaning the physical structure of the like and go back

633
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 1: to the Lower Devonian as we were talking about earlier.

634
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:07,160
Speaker 1: But there's still a lot we don't know about how

635
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 1: these alliances between organisms are formed in their earliest stages.

636
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:16,440
Speaker 1: They're surely interacting and forming relationships before they're actually building

637
00:36:16,560 --> 00:36:19,719
Speaker 1: bodies together. And one place where we can look for

638
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: clues about the early stages of this evolutionary process is

639
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 1: in what are known as a borderline likens, which they

640
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:32,320
Speaker 1: define as quote species associations showing a high degree of specialization,

641
00:36:32,680 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 1: but without the formation of well differentiated fungal layers characteristic

642
00:36:37,320 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 1: of true lins. And one of the organisms that they're

643
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: studying here really melted my brain. I love this. Uh.

644
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: It was first described in a study from two thousand

645
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 1: ten by Armando Azua Bustos see Gonzales, Silva, el solace,

646
00:36:54,239 --> 00:36:57,800
Speaker 1: Ari Palma and R. Vicuna. And this was a study

647
00:36:57,800 --> 00:37:00,879
Speaker 1: published in the journal Extreme of Files in two thousand ten.

648
00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 1: So the authors of the study describe a newly discovered

649
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:09,879
Speaker 1: species of single celled alga in the genus Dunaliella. Now

650
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 1: normally Dunaliella is a marine algae. They're they're tolerant of

651
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:18,319
Speaker 1: hypersaline conditions, so you salt them like a slug. They

652
00:37:18,320 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: don't really care. Uh. The scientific term for the ability

653
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: to live in really salty conditions is halo tolerance. By

654
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 1: the way, don't salt a slug, You'll just make a

655
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,319
Speaker 1: nath and you'll feel bad afterwards. Oh yeah, why why

656
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:32,360
Speaker 1: would you do that? How would you feel if a

657
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:37,840
Speaker 1: slug salted you? Yeah? Uh? So. Donaliella is a primary

658
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: food source for a lot of filter feeders of plankton

659
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: in the ocean. Uh. And a few species can actually

660
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:46,320
Speaker 1: be found in freshwater sources, but this genus has always

661
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,520
Speaker 1: been known as a water dwelling class of organisms. You

662
00:37:49,520 --> 00:37:52,439
Speaker 1: find them in the water, and almost always in very

663
00:37:52,520 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 1: salty water. Well. The study in two thousand ten discovered

664
00:37:56,440 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: an exception here. Researchers described a species of Dunaliella found

665
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: on the walls of a cave in the Atacama Desert

666
00:38:06,680 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 1: of Chile, so one of the driest places in the world.

667
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 1: How would the alga be surviving in a desert cave?

668
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 1: And at this point, I just want to read a

669
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: quote from the paper. Quote. On further inspection, we noticed

670
00:38:21,160 --> 00:38:25,399
Speaker 1: that it grows upon spider webs, attached to the walls

671
00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:29,719
Speaker 1: of the entrance twilight transition zone of the cave. This

672
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: peculiar growth habitat suggests that this Dunaliella species uses air

673
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:39,760
Speaker 1: moisture condensing on the spiderweb silk threads as a source

674
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 1: of water for doing photosynthesis in the driest desert of

675
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:49,200
Speaker 1: the world. This process of adaptation recapitulates the transition that

676
00:38:49,239 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 1: allowed land colonization by primitive plants and shows an unexpected

677
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 1: way of expansion of the life habitability range by a

678
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:03,720
Speaker 1: microbial species. So whoe, I mean, so many things interesting

679
00:39:03,760 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: about this. So you're you're talking about a plant, an

680
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 1: alga that normally lives in the water now living on land.

681
00:39:12,080 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 1: Of course, it needs sunlight to survive, but it lives

682
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: in a cave. So how is this going on while

683
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: it's living on silk from spider web threads, which you know,

684
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:27,160
Speaker 1: collects moisture from the fog in the air, and then

685
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:30,479
Speaker 1: it stays in the twilight transition zone of the cave

686
00:39:30,560 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: so it can still get some sunlight in order to

687
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 1: do photosynthesis. This is a This is a real cliffhanger

688
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:41,759
Speaker 1: of an organism. Yeah, yeah, I just I mean, you know,

689
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:44,880
Speaker 1: most of us wouldn't think of, you know, spider webs

690
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 1: in the twilight realm of a cave. Uh and and

691
00:39:48,600 --> 00:39:50,760
Speaker 1: and think to ourselves, that's a that's a great place

692
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 1: for some uh you know of photos synthetic organism to thrive.

693
00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:59,760
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's so strange. Yeah, but that's this nature

694
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:02,720
Speaker 1: on the spider webs. So I love this. And anyway,

695
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:06,800
Speaker 1: this species is now known as Dunaliella at a commensus.

696
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: And to come back to this paper in symbiosis, the

697
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: authors note something else about this species of alga. It

698
00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:19,560
Speaker 1: has been observed cuddling up to some fungus, specifically another

699
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:23,480
Speaker 1: hallow tolerant organism, a fungus, a kind of black yeast

700
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: called Hortatia vernecki i. So you would normally when you

701
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 1: look at these in these little dew drops of water

702
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 1: that are forming from the silk of a spider web

703
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: in this cave, you will find small colonies of algae

704
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:43,239
Speaker 1: of this species at at a commensus in which you

705
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:48,840
Speaker 1: will find embedded cells of this black yeast verneckii. And

706
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, there was no previous

707
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:55,000
Speaker 1: evidence that these species were in a symbiotic relationship. That

708
00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 1: they just appear to be huddling together, and finding organisms

709
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:02,799
Speaker 1: in proxy smity to one another is not necessarily a

710
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:06,840
Speaker 1: sign that they're symbiotic. You can think of examples, you know,

711
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: where you might find organisms together but not symbiotic in nature.

712
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,560
Speaker 1: I think, for example, about different animal species that you

713
00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:17,960
Speaker 1: might find gathering around a savannah water source to drink.

714
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 1: So if you have gazelles and elephants nearby each other

715
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:24,719
Speaker 1: drinking water, they're not necessarily in a symbiotic relationship with

716
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:27,240
Speaker 1: each other. They just happened to be side by side

717
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:31,440
Speaker 1: accessing a common resource. And so the question these authors

718
00:41:31,480 --> 00:41:34,280
Speaker 1: were looking into is well, can we find any evidence

719
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:37,560
Speaker 1: that these species are actually in a mutualism, that they're

720
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: providing benefits to one another, And unfortunately, the study encountered

721
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,560
Speaker 1: problems where they were unable to get the algae to

722
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: grow properly in vitro. They actually tried a couple of

723
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,279
Speaker 1: different algae, both at A Commensis and then another one

724
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: known as d Selena, which they note as a common

725
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: inhabitant of saltern brindes and salterns are pools of seawater

726
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:03,760
Speaker 1: that can evaporate and leave crystal salt behind. But anyway,

727
00:42:03,880 --> 00:42:06,960
Speaker 1: so they had these these methodological problems trying to get

728
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: the algae to grow in the lab, and they discussed

729
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:13,799
Speaker 1: several possible reasons for this, including the possibility that the

730
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 1: washing process of preparing the algae for in vitro incubation

731
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: may have removed some kind of vital environmental nutrient, or

732
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: in keeping with the findings that we were talking about

733
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,960
Speaker 1: earlier from spree Bill and others, it may possibly have

734
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:36,839
Speaker 1: removed some other crucial but yet unidentified microorganism partner. So

735
00:42:37,000 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: we still don't know if these organisms are involved in

736
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:43,279
Speaker 1: what could be called a borderline like in relationship or not.

737
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: The experiment was not able to establish evidence of any

738
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,520
Speaker 1: mutual benefit provided. But I do want to say always

739
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 1: respect reading research that doesn't come to a conclusion about

740
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 1: its central question, but still publishes its findings, because, for example,

741
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: discussion of the methodological problems they encounter it could be

742
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:02,840
Speaker 1: useful for other researchers who were trying to study the

743
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: same thing. Yeah. Absolutely, And I guess it's easy to

744
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: lose sight of the importance of that, especially in a

745
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:13,319
Speaker 1: sort of headline driven science consumption, right, you want that

746
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 1: especially we've already touched on some some some studies that

747
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:21,600
Speaker 1: definitely hit that chord totally. So the question remains about

748
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:24,480
Speaker 1: these species in particular. But I think this this is

749
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 1: one fascinating picture of how the symbiotic relationships that create

750
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 1: like an could potentially first evolve. You have two tiny

751
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:35,920
Speaker 1: organisms clinging to one another for drops of fog do

752
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 1: collecting in a spider's web in a cave against the

753
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:44,319
Speaker 1: water starved desert, and perhaps eventually in these harsh conditions

754
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,840
Speaker 1: they could come to appreciate what they can do for

755
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:49,919
Speaker 1: one another in an evolutionary sense. But we we don't

756
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:52,839
Speaker 1: always know how it happens. And that's hammered home by

757
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:56,600
Speaker 1: another quote that was cited in ed Young's article that

758
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:59,919
Speaker 1: was from a researcher from the University of Exeter named

759
00:44:00,080 --> 00:44:04,080
Speaker 1: Nick Talbot who's talking about lin and Talbot says quote,

760
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:08,280
Speaker 1: if the right combination meet together on a rock or twig,

761
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:11,120
Speaker 1: then a like and will form, and this will result

762
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 1: in a large and complex plant like organism that we

763
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: see on trees and rocks very commonly. The mechanism by

764
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:22,960
Speaker 1: which the symbiotic association occurs is completely unknown and remains

765
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:26,239
Speaker 1: a real mystery. I love it. I mean, so it

766
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: happens in nature all the time. We see it all

767
00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:31,239
Speaker 1: over the world. But it's it seems to be kind

768
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 1: of scattershot as to whether we can recreated in lab

769
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:39,000
Speaker 1: conditions or what all is needed to make the relationship work. Yeah,

770
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: it's it's it's such a fascinating topic. Again. Um, like

771
00:44:44,080 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 1: in are just so much more mysterious, uh and then

772
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 1: beautiful and complex, and we often give them credit. Um.

773
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:55,440
Speaker 1: I know during this trying time, those of us who

774
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: do have access to nature have you know, I've probably

775
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,200
Speaker 1: been taking more nature of walks, I know, just based

776
00:45:02,200 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 1: on my own family's activities and on various friends that

777
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:07,960
Speaker 1: I uh, you know, say, following on Instagram, I know,

778
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 1: I've noticed a lot of people exploring their their natural

779
00:45:11,239 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 1: world a little bit more, getting into perhaps, uh you know,

780
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:18,560
Speaker 1: the chronicling mushrooms in their area. Mushroom hunting can be

781
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: a great deal of fun. But like in hunting, uh

782
00:45:22,239 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 1: also something I think it's on the table right now,

783
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:27,719
Speaker 1: go out, uh look for the liking. Um, you know,

784
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,439
Speaker 1: observe the liking. Heck, heck, if you want to take

785
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,840
Speaker 1: some photos of liking and share them with us, please

786
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: do so. We'll we'll tell you where you can email

787
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:37,400
Speaker 1: us here in a bit. But also we have the

788
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,320
Speaker 1: we have the old Facebook group, the discussion module, the

789
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 1: stuff to your Mind discussion module. That's it seems like

790
00:45:42,600 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 1: a perfect place to drop some liking photos. Yeah. Also

791
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:48,200
Speaker 1: frankenstein up your own like and see if you can

792
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:50,560
Speaker 1: do it. Can you incubate get some algae and some

793
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: fungus together and just throw them into the mix. See

794
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:57,200
Speaker 1: what happens. Yeah, that's a good beginner level, like an

795
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,279
Speaker 1: experiment for your your quarantine days. You probably won't work,

796
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,640
Speaker 1: but you know, it's always worth a try. All right. Well,

797
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:06,400
Speaker 1: there you have it, um as always. Um. You know

798
00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:09,439
Speaker 1: you can find our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Uh.

799
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:12,080
Speaker 1: And that goes without saying right wherever that happens to be.

800
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:15,759
Speaker 1: If there's a way to rate us, to review us,

801
00:46:16,760 --> 00:46:20,839
Speaker 1: to give us a nice you know, smattering of stars, uh,

802
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:25,839
Speaker 1: let me appreciate that. That helps the show out allegedly. Um.

803
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,760
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you just have some wonderful liking experiences,

804
00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:31,799
Speaker 1: some li in sightings, or even better, if you have

805
00:46:31,840 --> 00:46:34,920
Speaker 1: a liking expertise, are you are are you? Are you

806
00:46:34,960 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 1: a liking hunter? An amateur like and hunter? Are you

807
00:46:37,600 --> 00:46:40,520
Speaker 1: yourself a lichnologist. Well then we would love to hear

808
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:43,320
Speaker 1: from you. Of course. Now we always want to say

809
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 1: a huge thank you to our excellent audio producer Seth

810
00:46:46,200 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. But if you do want to get in

811
00:46:48,560 --> 00:46:52,279
Speaker 1: touch with us, you can email us as always at contact.

812
00:46:52,320 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. Stuff to

813
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For

814
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:07,319
Speaker 1: more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the i heart

815
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,120
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your

816
00:47:10,160 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 1: favorite shows