1
00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:12,160
Speaker 1: Some questions that seem straightforward at first become devilishly hard

2
00:00:12,200 --> 00:00:15,760
Speaker 1: once you start to dig in. For example, what is

3
00:00:16,079 --> 00:00:19,320
Speaker 1: a species in our day to day lives? The answers

4
00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:22,680
Speaker 1: are pretty obvious. A cat is clearly not a dog.

5
00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:25,520
Speaker 1: When you call your children by your dog's name, it's

6
00:00:25,520 --> 00:00:28,680
Speaker 1: not because you're confused at the species level. It's because

7
00:00:28,680 --> 00:00:30,560
Speaker 1: your children kept you up last night and your brain

8
00:00:30,640 --> 00:00:33,760
Speaker 1: isn't working anymore. But then you go to the grocery

9
00:00:33,760 --> 00:00:38,520
Speaker 1: store and you look at the cabbage, the broccoli, the cauliflower, kale, cole, robbie,

10
00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:39,519
Speaker 1: and Brussels sprouts.

11
00:00:39,800 --> 00:00:41,680
Speaker 2: Those are all actually.

12
00:00:41,240 --> 00:00:44,559
Speaker 1: The same species, but they look super different.

13
00:00:45,080 --> 00:00:46,560
Speaker 2: And don't get me started on dogs.

14
00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:49,880
Speaker 1: How is it possible that Great Danes and teacup chihuahuas

15
00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:51,240
Speaker 1: are the same species?

16
00:00:51,760 --> 00:00:52,279
Speaker 2: All right? Now?

17
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:56,320
Speaker 1: Brussels sprouts and domestic dogs are examples where human intervention

18
00:00:56,480 --> 00:00:59,560
Speaker 1: has resulted in a lot of the variation in appearance.

19
00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:02,480
Speaker 1: But for a lot of scientific history, we relied on

20
00:01:02,560 --> 00:01:05,520
Speaker 1: things like appearance to figure out what a species is,

21
00:01:06,040 --> 00:01:09,440
Speaker 1: and clearly nature can produce a lot of variability at

22
00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:10,440
Speaker 1: the species.

23
00:01:10,080 --> 00:01:11,800
Speaker 2: Level, so this makes things hard.

24
00:01:12,560 --> 00:01:16,000
Speaker 1: But we also rely on other criteria for example, many

25
00:01:16,040 --> 00:01:19,360
Speaker 1: of us have heard that species can be defined as

26
00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:24,000
Speaker 1: organisms that breed together and produce offspring. So dogs and

27
00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:28,760
Speaker 1: cats don't make cogs or dats, so they're definitely different species.

28
00:01:29,200 --> 00:01:32,480
Speaker 1: But what about polar bears and grizzly bears. They split

29
00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:36,080
Speaker 1: evolutionarily not very long ago, so not only do they

30
00:01:36,160 --> 00:01:39,559
Speaker 1: look pretty genetically similar, but if you get them together,

31
00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:44,120
Speaker 1: they can produce offspring. So are polar bears and grizzly

32
00:01:44,160 --> 00:01:48,160
Speaker 1: bears actually just one species? Or does it matter that

33
00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:51,600
Speaker 1: they're specialized in very different environments? And if you have

34
00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:53,880
Speaker 1: picked up a grizzly bear and dropped it in the

35
00:01:53,960 --> 00:01:56,000
Speaker 1: middle of polar bear habitat.

36
00:01:55,880 --> 00:01:58,280
Speaker 2: It's not likely to survive. And what do you do

37
00:01:58,320 --> 00:01:59,200
Speaker 2: about fossils?

38
00:01:59,400 --> 00:02:01,760
Speaker 1: You can't ask fossils to interbreed, so how can you

39
00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:03,280
Speaker 1: figure out if there are species or not?

40
00:02:03,800 --> 00:02:07,040
Speaker 2: What do you do here? Well to answer this.

41
00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:11,840
Speaker 1: Deceptively complicated question today, we have my friend, collaborator and

42
00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:17,120
Speaker 1: perhaps most importantly, evolutionary biologist, doctor Scott Egan on the show.

43
00:02:17,280 --> 00:02:21,320
Speaker 1: He has discovered and scientifically described many species, and he's

44
00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:23,080
Speaker 1: gonna help us answer this question.

45
00:02:23,600 --> 00:02:29,639
Speaker 2: What is a species? Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's complicated universe.

46
00:02:42,880 --> 00:02:46,120
Speaker 3: Hi, I'm Daniel. I study particles and aliens, and we

47
00:02:46,200 --> 00:02:48,920
Speaker 3: now only have two species in the whitesun family.

48
00:02:49,800 --> 00:02:52,160
Speaker 2: You only have two species in the whites What happened?

49
00:02:52,760 --> 00:02:55,160
Speaker 3: We used to have a horse, but the horse moved

50
00:02:55,160 --> 00:02:56,280
Speaker 3: on to other owners.

51
00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:58,720
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry. How's Hazel holding up?

52
00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:02,679
Speaker 3: It's okay with it. It was time. The horse was

53
00:03:02,720 --> 00:03:06,840
Speaker 3: getting quite old and needed more attention than she could provide,

54
00:03:06,880 --> 00:03:09,040
Speaker 3: and we found somebody who really loves him and is

55
00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:11,799
Speaker 3: taking great care of him. And so she gets a

56
00:03:11,840 --> 00:03:14,280
Speaker 3: text every day with a picture from the new owner

57
00:03:14,600 --> 00:03:15,720
Speaker 3: of the very happy horse.

58
00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:18,320
Speaker 2: That's good, all right. Well, I'm Kelly Wienersmith.

59
00:03:18,360 --> 00:03:21,160
Speaker 1: I study parasites and space, and I have been a

60
00:03:21,240 --> 00:03:24,960
Speaker 1: collaborator on two projects that have described new species.

61
00:03:25,280 --> 00:03:25,520
Speaker 4: Wow.

62
00:03:25,600 --> 00:03:27,400
Speaker 1: And today we've got the collaborator that I worked with

63
00:03:27,440 --> 00:03:29,920
Speaker 1: on those projects on the show. And I am like,

64
00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:31,720
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, one of my dreams was

65
00:03:31,760 --> 00:03:35,160
Speaker 1: to describe a species. Amazing, and I didn't really do it,

66
00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:38,440
Speaker 1: but I was adjacent to the work and that was

67
00:03:38,560 --> 00:03:39,240
Speaker 1: very exciting.

68
00:03:40,320 --> 00:03:43,840
Speaker 3: Well, you're dodging the obvious question. How many species are

69
00:03:43,880 --> 00:03:45,280
Speaker 3: there on the Wienersmith farm?

70
00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:49,560
Speaker 1: Let's see, we've got dogs, cats, humans that should have

71
00:03:49,600 --> 00:03:56,960
Speaker 1: mentioned that first, but their third geese, ducks, chickens, sheep

72
00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:02,120
Speaker 1: and goats, and those are are you know, the ones

73
00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:04,400
Speaker 1: that I take care of. But you know, we live,

74
00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:07,800
Speaker 1: we live on a farm with many amazing species that

75
00:04:07,880 --> 00:04:10,520
Speaker 1: I think of as part of my extended family, and we,

76
00:04:10,600 --> 00:04:11,880
Speaker 1: you know, try to do the best we can to

77
00:04:11,920 --> 00:04:14,800
Speaker 1: take care of them as well. But we did just

78
00:04:14,840 --> 00:04:17,479
Speaker 1: come home with four sheep in the back of a

79
00:04:17,520 --> 00:04:20,320
Speaker 1: mini van this weekend and that was a bit crazy.

80
00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:21,919
Speaker 3: Does farm?

81
00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:24,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a little nuts, but we had fun,

82
00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:26,640
Speaker 2: all right.

83
00:04:26,680 --> 00:04:29,360
Speaker 3: Well, today we're going to be hearing all about species

84
00:04:29,400 --> 00:04:32,360
Speaker 3: and speciesation, so we'll be learning about whether or not

85
00:04:32,480 --> 00:04:35,280
Speaker 3: any of those varied species on Kelly's farm will eventually

86
00:04:35,360 --> 00:04:38,080
Speaker 3: hybridize and give us new animals with crazy names.

87
00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:40,840
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what would you call a human and human

88
00:04:40,839 --> 00:04:43,320
Speaker 2: and a sheep that's sheep? Will of course? What about

89
00:04:43,360 --> 00:04:49,680
Speaker 2: a human and goose? Aman aose?

90
00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:55,200
Speaker 3: Okay, get that hoose out of my house. It sounds

91
00:04:55,200 --> 00:04:57,039
Speaker 3: like a doctor's who's book, right there are hooses in

92
00:04:57,080 --> 00:04:57,680
Speaker 3: my houses?

93
00:04:57,839 --> 00:04:58,120
Speaker 2: It does.

94
00:04:58,160 --> 00:05:00,040
Speaker 1: And I'm going to reveal that you were texting me

95
00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:05,400
Speaker 1: this weekend with sheep related puns then, and I woke

96
00:05:05,480 --> 00:05:07,960
Speaker 1: up one morning to a sheep related pun and I

97
00:05:08,560 --> 00:05:11,159
Speaker 1: read it out loud, and my daughter said, mom, it

98
00:05:11,240 --> 00:05:14,279
Speaker 1: is way too early for sheep puns. And I was like, well,

99
00:05:14,560 --> 00:05:16,400
Speaker 1: I think I think the moment I wake up is

100
00:05:16,440 --> 00:05:19,080
Speaker 1: the right time for a sheep pun.

101
00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:22,520
Speaker 5: It's sheep, all right?

102
00:05:22,839 --> 00:05:24,040
Speaker 3: You can't stop me?

103
00:05:24,320 --> 00:05:28,040
Speaker 1: Oh no, I wish I could sometimes. And so on

104
00:05:28,080 --> 00:05:31,279
Speaker 1: today's show, we're talking about how do you define species?

105
00:05:31,320 --> 00:05:32,440
Speaker 2: What even is a species?

106
00:05:32,480 --> 00:05:34,080
Speaker 1: This is a question that's come up on the show

107
00:05:34,400 --> 00:05:37,000
Speaker 1: a lot, in a question that we've had from listeners

108
00:05:37,080 --> 00:05:39,440
Speaker 1: a lot. And so let's give you a sample of

109
00:05:39,480 --> 00:05:43,240
Speaker 1: the questions that we've received related to what is a species?

110
00:05:43,680 --> 00:05:46,600
Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Kelly Joe here, I've been wondering for

111
00:05:46,760 --> 00:05:52,600
Speaker 4: years what makes speciation so different between well species? They

112
00:05:52,640 --> 00:05:56,000
Speaker 4: often read about marine expeditions where they're delighted to discover

113
00:05:56,080 --> 00:05:59,160
Speaker 4: a new species of deep sea fish. For example, they'll

114
00:05:59,160 --> 00:06:02,160
Speaker 4: describe that it looks basically identical to the known species,

115
00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:04,680
Speaker 4: but the black bars on this one radiate out at

116
00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:09,880
Speaker 4: fifteen degrees instead of twenty two degrees, so it's definitely different. Okay,

117
00:06:10,200 --> 00:06:13,320
Speaker 4: that's awesome. And I love that kind of discovery. But

118
00:06:13,360 --> 00:06:17,040
Speaker 4: then you have dogs. A maltese and a husky are

119
00:06:17,040 --> 00:06:20,480
Speaker 4: the same species. That's ludicrous and there must be something

120
00:06:20,680 --> 00:06:23,359
Speaker 4: wild going on in the genetics to allow that. So

121
00:06:24,120 --> 00:06:26,960
Speaker 4: what's going on? How can we have separate species of

122
00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:32,000
Speaker 4: fish that are effectively identical to any lay person while Leika, Lassie,

123
00:06:32,040 --> 00:06:36,040
Speaker 4: and Balto are all the same. Interested in better understanding

124
00:06:36,120 --> 00:06:38,279
Speaker 4: this if possible. Thanks a lot, guys.

125
00:06:39,240 --> 00:06:41,200
Speaker 6: I've had this question in the back of my mind

126
00:06:41,240 --> 00:06:43,279
Speaker 6: a few times, but it felt a little silly about

127
00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:46,640
Speaker 6: not really knowing the answer. What is a species exactly?

128
00:06:47,279 --> 00:06:49,520
Speaker 6: I thought it was something about being able to make

129
00:06:49,640 --> 00:06:52,840
Speaker 6: and produce viable offspring, but hybrids seem to break that.

130
00:06:53,320 --> 00:06:55,520
Speaker 6: It's starting to seem kind of handwavy. Is it the

131
00:06:55,520 --> 00:06:58,760
Speaker 6: biology equivalent of planet Like? I think you talked about

132
00:06:58,839 --> 00:07:01,680
Speaker 6: bacteria trading DNA at some point, but that's not mating.

133
00:07:01,920 --> 00:07:04,599
Speaker 6: Does it make sense to talk about species that reproduce us?

134
00:07:04,640 --> 00:07:05,039
Speaker 7: Actually?

135
00:07:05,680 --> 00:07:07,839
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, really looking forward to your answer.

136
00:07:08,160 --> 00:07:11,840
Speaker 1: Okay, great questions, and I know just the guy to

137
00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:13,920
Speaker 1: answer these questions for you. We're going to bring my

138
00:07:13,960 --> 00:07:16,480
Speaker 1: friend Scott Egan on the show, who has described a

139
00:07:16,480 --> 00:07:19,480
Speaker 1: bunch of different insects species, and he's going to give

140
00:07:19,560 --> 00:07:20,360
Speaker 1: us some really.

141
00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:23,040
Speaker 3: Great answers because he comes from a state that doesn't

142
00:07:23,040 --> 00:07:25,920
Speaker 3: have some weird lady in a toga standing on the

143
00:07:25,920 --> 00:07:28,120
Speaker 3: neck of some other guy in their flag. He's got

144
00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:30,040
Speaker 3: like a really nice, simple flag.

145
00:07:30,280 --> 00:07:31,960
Speaker 2: We like liberty and we're in charge.

146
00:07:32,040 --> 00:07:32,320
Speaker 5: Man.

147
00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:36,880
Speaker 2: That's the message you should get Virginia.

148
00:07:37,600 --> 00:07:41,560
Speaker 1: Doctor Scott Egan is an evolutionary biologist and scientific naturalist

149
00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:45,520
Speaker 1: at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Between academic degrees, he

150
00:07:45,560 --> 00:07:48,680
Speaker 1: worked as a seventh grade public science teacher. Thank you

151
00:07:48,720 --> 00:07:50,720
Speaker 1: so much, Scott for being on the front lines there.

152
00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:54,640
Speaker 1: Scott was recently elected as a Fellow with the Royal

153
00:07:54,760 --> 00:07:57,760
Speaker 1: Entomological Society and a Teaching Fellow with the Rice Center

154
00:07:57,800 --> 00:08:01,480
Speaker 1: for Teaching Excellence. He's published over one hundred and thirty papers,

155
00:08:01,560 --> 00:08:06,040
Speaker 1: including the discovery of twenty new insects species. His discoveries

156
00:08:06,040 --> 00:08:08,360
Speaker 1: have been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic,

157
00:08:08,440 --> 00:08:12,720
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Scientific American, and the

158
00:08:12,720 --> 00:08:15,720
Speaker 1: game show Jeopardy, which is a like stretch life goal

159
00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:18,720
Speaker 1: of mine to somehow tangentially end up on Jeopardy.

160
00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:21,560
Speaker 5: Welcome to the show, Scott, Thanks Thanks for having me.

161
00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:22,400
Speaker 5: Kelly and Daniel.

162
00:08:22,960 --> 00:08:24,120
Speaker 2: We're excited you're here.

163
00:08:24,560 --> 00:08:27,360
Speaker 3: Tell us about your question on Jeopardy. What was it about?

164
00:08:27,720 --> 00:08:31,120
Speaker 5: Well, first off, I might have never known about it,

165
00:08:31,480 --> 00:08:34,560
Speaker 5: but I had an undergrad working in the summer, and

166
00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:37,360
Speaker 5: she told her grandfather what she was doing that summer,

167
00:08:38,040 --> 00:08:41,440
Speaker 5: and then Grandpa went back to whatever grandpa's do, and

168
00:08:41,559 --> 00:08:43,760
Speaker 5: he chimes her back like a week later and said,

169
00:08:43,880 --> 00:08:47,520
Speaker 5: I think I heard about what you're doing on Jeopardy.

170
00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:51,440
Speaker 5: And so we all just attacked and googled and found

171
00:08:51,440 --> 00:08:56,640
Speaker 5: out and lo and behold one of our recent discoveries,

172
00:08:56,720 --> 00:09:02,280
Speaker 5: a discovery where a parasitic vine was attacking one of

173
00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:05,679
Speaker 5: the little insects we study that is also a parasite

174
00:09:05,679 --> 00:09:08,640
Speaker 5: on their shared host. A plant was one of the features,

175
00:09:08,800 --> 00:09:12,040
Speaker 5: and so we were able to Yeah, so yeah, we

176
00:09:12,120 --> 00:09:16,960
Speaker 5: ended up as a cool little clue on Jeopardy. Interestingly enough,

177
00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:19,360
Speaker 5: I was just contacted by a game show in Germany

178
00:09:19,840 --> 00:09:21,959
Speaker 5: about another discovery we made. So we're gonna be featured

179
00:09:21,960 --> 00:09:23,679
Speaker 5: on a German game show in a couple weeks here,

180
00:09:23,720 --> 00:09:25,240
Speaker 5: which I'm also excited about.

181
00:09:25,480 --> 00:09:28,720
Speaker 3: That's amazing anyway we can connect folks to science. I'm

182
00:09:28,760 --> 00:09:30,840
Speaker 3: in favor yeah, right, same.

183
00:09:31,320 --> 00:09:33,040
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, so let's jump right in.

184
00:09:33,120 --> 00:09:34,880
Speaker 1: And so we've got a bunch of questions from our

185
00:09:34,880 --> 00:09:38,160
Speaker 1: listeners about how you define the word species. But I

186
00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:40,719
Speaker 1: think it helps first to talk about the process by

187
00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:44,160
Speaker 1: which you get species before we start talking about definitions.

188
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:46,960
Speaker 1: So can you tell us a bit about what speciation

189
00:09:47,400 --> 00:09:49,199
Speaker 1: is in some examples of how it happens.

190
00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:52,080
Speaker 5: I love this question, and I love that you're immediately

191
00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:56,559
Speaker 5: linking up those two somewhat separate things. How we define

192
00:09:56,600 --> 00:09:59,959
Speaker 5: species and then the study of the evolution of speci

193
00:10:00,240 --> 00:10:03,560
Speaker 5: or speciation, because they are intrinsically linked. How you define

194
00:10:03,559 --> 00:10:06,920
Speaker 5: species then tells you how you are going to study

195
00:10:06,960 --> 00:10:10,199
Speaker 5: that process of the evolution of species. So very important.

196
00:10:10,240 --> 00:10:13,400
Speaker 5: So let's start off a speciation. It's an evolutionary process

197
00:10:13,600 --> 00:10:17,880
Speaker 5: where one lineage evolves into two or more lineages through time,

198
00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:22,240
Speaker 5: simply stated. But then how you measure it depends on

199
00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:25,400
Speaker 5: that definition of the species. That's so important. An important

200
00:10:25,440 --> 00:10:28,680
Speaker 5: thing about both of them is that it's an evolutionary process.

201
00:10:28,720 --> 00:10:31,920
Speaker 5: So it's a continuum. You have some lineage and it

202
00:10:31,960 --> 00:10:35,520
Speaker 5: evolves into two, but that takes time, and so by definition,

203
00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:39,199
Speaker 5: you should find things halfway along the way or partly

204
00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:42,120
Speaker 5: along the way, or close to being a species, but

205
00:10:42,240 --> 00:10:45,600
Speaker 5: not really. And so that gets at the definition part

206
00:10:45,640 --> 00:10:48,200
Speaker 5: that if you find it things all along this continuum,

207
00:10:48,240 --> 00:10:50,840
Speaker 5: it can be really challenging to define what a species is.

208
00:10:51,679 --> 00:10:54,240
Speaker 5: So then you also ask, like, you know, how speciation

209
00:10:54,280 --> 00:10:57,640
Speaker 5: can happen or some examples of it. We have many examples.

210
00:10:57,679 --> 00:11:02,720
Speaker 5: Most take time, right, we think about processes taking you know, millennium,

211
00:11:02,720 --> 00:11:05,040
Speaker 5: millions of years, and that's that's the general way in

212
00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:08,679
Speaker 5: which biodiversity has evolved. But what's really interesting is scientists

213
00:11:08,720 --> 00:11:11,320
Speaker 5: can actually study it, sometimes in real time when we

214
00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:16,360
Speaker 5: get kind of special experiments happening unintended or intended where

215
00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:20,960
Speaker 5: scientists can actually watch lineages move environments and begin adapting

216
00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:24,720
Speaker 5: to new environments and then look at how those potential

217
00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:29,520
Speaker 5: changes result in, you know, the trajectory evolving towards two

218
00:11:29,679 --> 00:11:30,920
Speaker 5: very very different things.

219
00:11:31,240 --> 00:11:35,240
Speaker 3: I'm confused about the continuum issue because if you define

220
00:11:35,280 --> 00:11:38,720
Speaker 3: the species in one way, like can these two organisms

221
00:11:38,760 --> 00:11:42,760
Speaker 3: have fertile offspring? Then the answer is binary, right, It's

222
00:11:42,800 --> 00:11:45,760
Speaker 3: either yes or it's no. Does the continuum come in

223
00:11:45,800 --> 00:11:49,160
Speaker 3: when you talk about the communities of species, like if

224
00:11:49,160 --> 00:11:52,320
Speaker 3: you have you know, these elk and those antelope. Maybe

225
00:11:52,320 --> 00:11:55,480
Speaker 3: some fraction of them could have fertile offspring, but some

226
00:11:55,520 --> 00:11:57,800
Speaker 3: fraction of them could not. Where is the continuum there?

227
00:11:58,240 --> 00:11:58,400
Speaker 7: Right?

228
00:11:58,600 --> 00:12:02,240
Speaker 5: Absolutely, So it's not binary. You can actually find things

229
00:12:02,280 --> 00:12:06,920
Speaker 5: with what we call partial reproductive isolation, where some barrier

230
00:12:07,160 --> 00:12:11,760
Speaker 5: like the fertility or viability of offspring, some are fertile

231
00:12:11,880 --> 00:12:14,640
Speaker 5: and viable and some are not. Sometimes that depends on

232
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:18,240
Speaker 5: potentially the direction of the cross, whether it's a male

233
00:12:18,320 --> 00:12:20,920
Speaker 5: from species one and a female of species two or

234
00:12:21,000 --> 00:12:24,360
Speaker 5: vice versa. That can completely change the story. You know,

235
00:12:24,480 --> 00:12:28,080
Speaker 5: even the well documented cases where we talk about like

236
00:12:28,240 --> 00:12:32,959
Speaker 5: infertile or inviable hybrids, there's always exceptions even to those rules,

237
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:35,360
Speaker 5: where you can actually find that every once in a while,

238
00:12:35,720 --> 00:12:39,319
Speaker 5: a viable and fertile hybrid can be formed. So yeah,

239
00:12:39,360 --> 00:12:41,840
Speaker 5: so it's a continuum. You see things all along that.

240
00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:45,920
Speaker 3: Path without getting political, it seems like maybe nothing in

241
00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:49,320
Speaker 3: biology is binary.

242
00:12:50,240 --> 00:12:51,280
Speaker 5: It depends.

243
00:12:51,760 --> 00:12:55,199
Speaker 3: It's always conditional, always, it depends.

244
00:12:55,800 --> 00:12:57,960
Speaker 1: So, Scott, if somebody were to say to you, I

245
00:12:58,040 --> 00:13:03,000
Speaker 1: don't believe speciation happens, what concrete example would you give

246
00:13:03,000 --> 00:13:04,800
Speaker 1: them to be like, no, look, here's all the data

247
00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:05,240
Speaker 1: we have.

248
00:13:05,480 --> 00:13:08,160
Speaker 2: This is a very clear example, what would you cite?

249
00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:10,679
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love that question. That's one of the first

250
00:13:10,679 --> 00:13:13,520
Speaker 5: three lectures I give in the evolution class, which is

251
00:13:13,640 --> 00:13:17,080
Speaker 5: we talk about just the massive amount of evidence of evolution,

252
00:13:17,280 --> 00:13:20,680
Speaker 5: and one of those pieces of evidence is speciation and action,

253
00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:26,160
Speaker 5: meaning we can actually observe speciation happen in the laboratory

254
00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:28,720
Speaker 5: or in nature. And I'll start off with a really

255
00:13:28,720 --> 00:13:32,040
Speaker 5: cool example from the laboratory because it's just so complete.

256
00:13:32,320 --> 00:13:36,160
Speaker 5: There was this wonderful experiment done by doctor Chabon Duffy.

257
00:13:36,720 --> 00:13:40,280
Speaker 5: She studied these little RNA viruses that attacked bacteria, and

258
00:13:40,360 --> 00:13:44,560
Speaker 5: she was observing her population of these RNA viruses, and

259
00:13:44,600 --> 00:13:47,360
Speaker 5: at some point they got a mutation and it allowed

260
00:13:47,400 --> 00:13:50,640
Speaker 5: that virus that attacked a bacteria to expand its host

261
00:13:50,760 --> 00:13:54,080
Speaker 5: range so it could attack many more bacteria. And then

262
00:13:54,120 --> 00:13:57,079
Speaker 5: she got really interested in that lineage, which she gave

263
00:13:57,200 --> 00:13:59,960
Speaker 5: kind of a different name to that strain. And then

264
00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:03,600
Speaker 5: that new virus then had a second mutation, and it

265
00:14:03,720 --> 00:14:06,959
Speaker 5: allowed it to live in a better way. It basically

266
00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,000
Speaker 5: adapted to this new environment, but it then allowed it

267
00:14:11,120 --> 00:14:14,160
Speaker 5: not to be able to expand back to the original host.

268
00:14:14,520 --> 00:14:17,160
Speaker 5: So the virus basically had two mutations that led to

269
00:14:17,200 --> 00:14:20,040
Speaker 5: it attacking and surviving well in a new host, and

270
00:14:20,120 --> 00:14:22,960
Speaker 5: it now would never even run into the original ancestors.

271
00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:25,480
Speaker 5: So now you have these two RNA viruses that are

272
00:14:25,520 --> 00:14:29,160
Speaker 5: completely isolated from each other, and that was observed in

273
00:14:29,200 --> 00:14:32,120
Speaker 5: the laboratory over you know, one hundred generations, which it's

274
00:14:32,200 --> 00:14:35,200
Speaker 5: like the blink of an eye, how fast viruses have generations.

275
00:14:35,400 --> 00:14:38,240
Speaker 5: So that's a lab experiment where you've seen two species

276
00:14:38,360 --> 00:14:41,240
Speaker 5: evolve and then in nature receive the same thing. So

277
00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:45,960
Speaker 5: a great example comes from these wonderfully interesting fruit feeding

278
00:14:46,040 --> 00:14:50,440
Speaker 5: flies called raguelites. They've lived in North America for you know,

279
00:14:50,520 --> 00:14:54,760
Speaker 5: millions of years, living on these plants called cretagus or hawthorns,

280
00:14:55,400 --> 00:14:59,080
Speaker 5: and then four hundred years ago Europeans start settling the

281
00:14:59,160 --> 00:15:02,400
Speaker 5: northeastern part of North America and bringing apples with them

282
00:15:02,440 --> 00:15:05,680
Speaker 5: from Eurasia. Well, it just so happens that apples are

283
00:15:05,720 --> 00:15:09,000
Speaker 5: really closely related to hawthorns, only they're much bigger.

284
00:15:09,360 --> 00:15:11,920
Speaker 3: Apples are not native to America. You're telling me that

285
00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:15,720
Speaker 3: all those like New England apple orchards are invasive species.

286
00:15:16,560 --> 00:15:21,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so they're Yeah. So the genus malice,

287
00:15:21,640 --> 00:15:24,640
Speaker 5: which is what apples are, comes from Eurasia. But these

288
00:15:24,680 --> 00:15:28,120
Speaker 5: hawthorn flies that are from North America saw this wonderful

289
00:15:28,160 --> 00:15:30,600
Speaker 5: new resource. They're growing right on the fence lines of

290
00:15:30,640 --> 00:15:33,160
Speaker 5: all of these orchards even to this day, and they

291
00:15:33,280 --> 00:15:36,560
Speaker 5: shifted onto the apple crops. And in the course of

292
00:15:36,680 --> 00:15:40,880
Speaker 5: about one hundred and sixty years, they have evolved very

293
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:43,680
Speaker 5: very strong differences in the timing they come out during

294
00:15:43,680 --> 00:15:46,200
Speaker 5: the year. They come out now when the apples come

295
00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:49,000
Speaker 5: out rather than when the hawthorn fruits come out. And

296
00:15:49,040 --> 00:15:52,080
Speaker 5: they've also evolved some differences in their habitat choices, their

297
00:15:52,120 --> 00:15:54,840
Speaker 5: preferences that are very very strong, so they only choose

298
00:15:55,160 --> 00:15:57,360
Speaker 5: to go to one of these scruting trees versus the other.

299
00:15:57,760 --> 00:16:02,080
Speaker 5: The combination of the evolution of differences and habitat choice

300
00:16:02,080 --> 00:16:05,920
Speaker 5: differences has led to very distinct lineages living right in

301
00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:10,280
Speaker 5: the same farm or orchard across the northeastern United States.

302
00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,160
Speaker 5: And we know when it happened. We know when it

303
00:16:12,200 --> 00:16:15,080
Speaker 5: started because it was an agricultural crop. We know this

304
00:16:15,160 --> 00:16:18,360
Speaker 5: shift happened somewhere in upstate New York in the Hudson

305
00:16:18,440 --> 00:16:22,480
Speaker 5: River Valley. USDA scientists were monitoring the apples and observed

306
00:16:22,560 --> 00:16:25,280
Speaker 5: this shift happening and so in one hundred and fifty

307
00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:27,720
Speaker 5: hundred and sixty years, which is also the same number

308
00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:30,800
Speaker 5: of generations these flies have had, they've evolved very very

309
00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:33,600
Speaker 5: strong differences that you can observe in a laboratory or

310
00:16:33,600 --> 00:16:34,080
Speaker 5: in nature.

311
00:16:34,400 --> 00:16:36,680
Speaker 1: And so now there's a hawthorn, would you call it

312
00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:38,280
Speaker 1: a hawthorn species of fly?

313
00:16:38,400 --> 00:16:41,760
Speaker 2: In an apple species of fly? Or are they just you.

314
00:16:41,840 --> 00:16:44,920
Speaker 1: Use the word lineage, which seems like a smart way

315
00:16:44,960 --> 00:16:46,520
Speaker 1: to avoid saying species.

316
00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:49,359
Speaker 2: What do you think are they lineages or species?

317
00:16:49,840 --> 00:16:52,040
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I think it'd be good if we jump

318
00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:55,400
Speaker 5: into the species definition part, because it's intrinsically tied to

319
00:16:55,480 --> 00:17:00,000
Speaker 5: talking about any of these stories. So for the ragalit's fruitflow.

320
00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:04,240
Speaker 5: They have had a strong reduction in the degree of

321
00:17:04,320 --> 00:17:08,120
Speaker 5: gene flow between these lineages that puts them very close

322
00:17:08,200 --> 00:17:11,359
Speaker 5: to what one might define as a species, depending on

323
00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:15,159
Speaker 5: your definition. So for the most part, my lab and

324
00:17:15,200 --> 00:17:17,679
Speaker 5: I think a generally accepted term for how you define

325
00:17:17,720 --> 00:17:21,720
Speaker 5: species is some kind of group of individuals and populations

326
00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:25,920
Speaker 5: that actually interbreed or potentially can interreed, and that can

327
00:17:25,960 --> 00:17:28,400
Speaker 5: make viable infur low spring, which we've already talked about

328
00:17:28,400 --> 00:17:32,679
Speaker 5: to some degree. Under that definition, these ragulities. Fruitflies are

329
00:17:33,440 --> 00:17:37,840
Speaker 5: for all intensive purposes on that path to being distinct lineages,

330
00:17:38,200 --> 00:17:41,119
Speaker 5: although they still hybridize to some degree.

331
00:17:41,280 --> 00:17:44,200
Speaker 1: When you say gene flow, that means essentially having sex

332
00:17:44,240 --> 00:17:44,720
Speaker 1: with each other.

333
00:17:44,840 --> 00:17:47,600
Speaker 5: Right, just yep for exchanging DNA.

334
00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:51,120
Speaker 3: Okay, and can I back up and ask you sort

335
00:17:51,119 --> 00:17:54,880
Speaker 3: of a meta question about this. The definition you gave

336
00:17:55,119 --> 00:17:59,320
Speaker 3: sounds sort of ornate and elaborate, almost as if it's

337
00:17:59,480 --> 00:18:04,119
Speaker 3: meant to describe something we sort of understand intuitively and

338
00:18:04,359 --> 00:18:08,840
Speaker 3: historically but didn't exactly derive from first principles. Kind of

339
00:18:08,880 --> 00:18:12,440
Speaker 3: like the way we describe planetary definitions, is that because

340
00:18:12,880 --> 00:18:15,879
Speaker 3: species are a thing that humans do, Like this, is

341
00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:20,240
Speaker 3: us categorizing some just vast continuum of life or can

342
00:18:20,280 --> 00:18:22,239
Speaker 3: you make an argument that, like, hey, this is a

343
00:18:22,280 --> 00:18:25,439
Speaker 3: real thing, it's an actual emergent phenomena in biology that

344
00:18:25,520 --> 00:18:28,760
Speaker 3: deserves like a name. Or is it just us trying

345
00:18:28,800 --> 00:18:32,200
Speaker 3: to give post facto a scientific basis for something we've

346
00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:33,280
Speaker 3: just been saying a lot.

347
00:18:33,600 --> 00:18:35,879
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a really good question and a question that

348
00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:40,439
Speaker 5: evolutionary biologists debate and discuss to this day. Oh Okay,

349
00:18:40,800 --> 00:18:43,960
Speaker 5: I think if you take it at a very basic level,

350
00:18:44,560 --> 00:18:47,119
Speaker 5: if we were all to walk on a trail together

351
00:18:47,280 --> 00:18:49,639
Speaker 5: in a park and look at things. We would see

352
00:18:49,680 --> 00:18:52,720
Speaker 5: things and we would call them by different names. We

353
00:18:52,720 --> 00:18:56,720
Speaker 5: would see differences in nature. And so when you look

354
00:18:56,800 --> 00:19:00,960
Speaker 5: at even a group of closely related organ that maybe

355
00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:04,440
Speaker 5: exit you know, harbors multiple species or types within it,

356
00:19:04,760 --> 00:19:08,399
Speaker 5: we see discontinuities. We see differences that are pretty strong.

357
00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:12,760
Speaker 5: So while that evolutionary process of the continuum might show

358
00:19:12,920 --> 00:19:17,040
Speaker 5: some continuous nature in the beginning, ultimately some sort of

359
00:19:17,160 --> 00:19:20,800
Speaker 5: barrier to that genetic exchange occurs so that those things

360
00:19:20,840 --> 00:19:24,399
Speaker 5: are now distinctly evolving differently, and you can see that.

361
00:19:24,480 --> 00:19:27,160
Speaker 5: You can see that in the behavior or the DNA

362
00:19:27,720 --> 00:19:31,560
Speaker 5: or the morphology. So yes, and no, there is a

363
00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:35,960
Speaker 5: continuous nature into it, but there's also some strong, consistent

364
00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:39,040
Speaker 5: discontinuities that you observe. And you know, if you were

365
00:19:39,040 --> 00:19:40,960
Speaker 5: to take us and we were to go into a

366
00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:43,760
Speaker 5: different for us, somewhere far away and met people that

367
00:19:43,880 --> 00:19:47,200
Speaker 5: had no scientific trending like maybe our backgrounds, they would

368
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:50,560
Speaker 5: see differences and see types of things and want to

369
00:19:50,600 --> 00:19:55,199
Speaker 5: give them names. So I do think species does mean something,

370
00:19:55,240 --> 00:19:58,160
Speaker 5: and it is a real biological entity. Even though there's

371
00:19:58,240 --> 00:20:01,280
Speaker 5: a lot of exceptions to the rules and gray area

372
00:20:01,320 --> 00:20:04,919
Speaker 5: and fuzziness, which is part of the excitement of studying biology.

373
00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:07,320
Speaker 3: I should probably anticipated the answer the question would be

374
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:09,400
Speaker 3: yes and no. Let me ask you this one more

375
00:20:09,720 --> 00:20:13,600
Speaker 3: question about the nature species, which is is the definition transitive?

376
00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:16,560
Speaker 3: Like if A can have babies with B and B

377
00:20:16,640 --> 00:20:18,560
Speaker 3: can have babies with C, does that mean A can

378
00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:19,320
Speaker 3: have babies with C.

379
00:20:20,080 --> 00:20:25,119
Speaker 5: Ah. Very good question. Well, there are examples. The exact

380
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:28,760
Speaker 5: thing you just talked about does exist in nature where

381
00:20:28,960 --> 00:20:32,280
Speaker 5: A cannot have babies with C, and we call those

382
00:20:32,359 --> 00:20:35,480
Speaker 5: things a ring species. So you can think about a

383
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:38,880
Speaker 5: population of organisms that can exchange DNA and they are

384
00:20:38,920 --> 00:20:42,760
Speaker 5: commonly moving, adapting and evolving around some barrier, usually like

385
00:20:42,800 --> 00:20:47,560
Speaker 5: a geographic barrier, like let's say the Himalayas. Okay, there's

386
00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:51,200
Speaker 5: a very famous bird species called the greenish warbler that

387
00:20:51,640 --> 00:20:52,480
Speaker 5: started down.

388
00:20:52,880 --> 00:20:55,280
Speaker 3: The Greenish It's.

389
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:58,000
Speaker 5: Called the greenish warbler. Don't kill the messenger.

390
00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:00,280
Speaker 3: Here's a moment I'm like, Wow, we need a size

391
00:21:00,359 --> 00:21:01,960
Speaker 3: Latin name for this thing because it does.

392
00:21:02,119 --> 00:21:05,280
Speaker 5: It does, but I can never remember that. You'll have

393
00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:07,919
Speaker 5: to ask an ornithologist about its real scientific nature.

394
00:21:08,640 --> 00:21:10,920
Speaker 3: So who does the greenish warbler like to have babies with.

395
00:21:11,080 --> 00:21:14,080
Speaker 5: Yeah, so every population that's right next to So as

396
00:21:14,119 --> 00:21:17,280
Speaker 5: the greenish warbler adapted and moved along both sides of

397
00:21:17,280 --> 00:21:20,760
Speaker 5: the Tibetan Plateau, it adapted to those unique conditions on

398
00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:24,480
Speaker 5: the east and the west. Ultimately those lineages met on

399
00:21:24,560 --> 00:21:26,920
Speaker 5: the north side of the Tibetan Plateau. By the time

400
00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:30,960
Speaker 5: they got there, they had evolved different bird songs and

401
00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 5: slightly different bars wingbars, which are very species diagnostic for

402
00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:39,159
Speaker 5: some bird lineages. So each of those populations interbreeds with

403
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:42,160
Speaker 5: the other until the last ones they don't recognize each

404
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:44,359
Speaker 5: other's song or what they look like anymore and do

405
00:21:44,440 --> 00:21:46,320
Speaker 5: not interbreed. We call that a ring species, and it's

406
00:21:46,359 --> 00:21:52,280
Speaker 5: a wonderful example of this continuous nature of evolution and speciation.

407
00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:55,359
Speaker 1: Were you trying to set up ring species because I

408
00:21:55,400 --> 00:21:56,120
Speaker 1: had that in my notes?

409
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:56,760
Speaker 2: That was great?

410
00:21:57,640 --> 00:22:00,879
Speaker 3: Oh no, No, I was just curious because I'm wondering, like,

411
00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:03,480
Speaker 3: if this really is a continuum, you know, where do

412
00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:05,639
Speaker 3: you draw the lines? And if you don't have the

413
00:22:05,680 --> 00:22:08,920
Speaker 3: transitive property, then boy becomes really complicated.

414
00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:09,959
Speaker 7: Right.

415
00:22:10,680 --> 00:22:12,520
Speaker 5: So, if you were to think about what a species

416
00:22:12,600 --> 00:22:14,560
Speaker 5: is with the greenish warbler, and you were to study

417
00:22:14,600 --> 00:22:17,320
Speaker 5: any of those populations along the ring, you would say, no,

418
00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:19,800
Speaker 5: they're the same thing, except when you got to the

419
00:22:19,920 --> 00:22:23,439
Speaker 5: very top. Now you have these two lineages that don't

420
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:27,159
Speaker 5: recognize each other's songs, so you have a decrease in

421
00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 5: gene flow, which we call reproductive isolation. If you look

422
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:33,680
Speaker 5: at their DNA, you also see genetic differences. They are

423
00:22:33,800 --> 00:22:36,640
Speaker 5: very very distinct from each other. Then all the other

424
00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:40,479
Speaker 5: continuous parts of that, and then morphologically they look different.

425
00:22:40,640 --> 00:22:43,800
Speaker 5: One has one wingbar one has two. That's important to

426
00:22:43,880 --> 00:22:46,920
Speaker 5: the greenish warbler. That actually covers a lot of the

427
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:52,639
Speaker 5: ways in which people define species morphology, genetics, behavior, and

428
00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:56,640
Speaker 5: based on any of those definitions, those top two populations

429
00:22:56,640 --> 00:22:59,679
Speaker 5: that don't recognize each other would be defined as potentially distinct.

430
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:02,439
Speaker 3: Well, that's mind blowing and fascinating to me because it

431
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:05,720
Speaker 3: suggests that there really is a continuum here, and yet

432
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 3: you can also crisply define a species, except that the

433
00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:12,359
Speaker 3: definition isn't unique, because you can choose some window in

434
00:23:12,400 --> 00:23:16,080
Speaker 3: that continuum and keep expanding it until birds at the

435
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,840
Speaker 3: edge of the window can no longer mate with each other,

436
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:22,080
Speaker 3: and that's your species window. But you could also slide

437
00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:24,840
Speaker 3: it around the ring right, like, move it thirty kilometers

438
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:28,320
Speaker 3: and that window also satisfies the constraints. And it's a

439
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:32,080
Speaker 3: species but has different overlapping members to it. So that's

440
00:23:32,160 --> 00:23:36,160
Speaker 3: just like there really is something discrete there, and yet

441
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 3: the whole spectrum is continuous. Wow.

442
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a hard field. And so what is the

443
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 1: answer then with the ring species, Scott? When you describe that,

444
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: would you say you have two different species at the

445
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,840
Speaker 1: top of the Himalayas or you're just like, we're this

446
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,480
Speaker 1: is a process and that's how we are, okay.

447
00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:58,160
Speaker 5: I mean to me, the reason I bring it up

448
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:01,399
Speaker 5: is because it's a wonderful illustration of the continuous nature

449
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:04,480
Speaker 5: of it. Yeah, that southern group of lineages, you know,

450
00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:07,080
Speaker 5: one might think is the ancestor, and you can see

451
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:10,199
Speaker 5: each of these stages as you move along that have

452
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:12,919
Speaker 5: evolved over you know, tens of thousands of years to

453
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 5: hundreds of thousands of years. But when you get to

454
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 5: the top, they don't recognize each other. So that's why

455
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:18,560
Speaker 5: I use it. I use it to illustrate.

456
00:24:19,800 --> 00:24:21,880
Speaker 3: But what's it like for those guys to meet each other?

457
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:24,400
Speaker 3: They must be like you seem sort of. I mean,

458
00:24:24,440 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 3: I wish we could but I guess we can't, or yeah,

459
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:28,840
Speaker 3: you know, there's got to be some recognition there.

460
00:24:29,160 --> 00:24:33,159
Speaker 5: Yeah, birds are wonderful systems to study species because bird's

461
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 5: song is something we can hear and it's really really

462
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 5: important to the birds. So it's something where human perception

463
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:43,040
Speaker 5: and the biology we're watching actually can kind of match up.

464
00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 5: There's wonderful stories, for example, from the Darwin's finches as well,

465
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:49,199
Speaker 5: where they have evolutionary changes that changes their beak shape

466
00:24:49,240 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 5: for maybe an ecological region to eat seeds, and then

467
00:24:52,960 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 5: you know that's also the way in which they sting,

468
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:58,440
Speaker 5: and so the birds start recognizing each other as well.

469
00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:00,920
Speaker 1: Similarly, Well, running we have on the show is that

470
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,479
Speaker 1: anytime Daniel asked me a straightforward question about biology, I

471
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:08,920
Speaker 1: always say, well, it depends, and so we're we're keeping

472
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:09,640
Speaker 1: that going here.

473
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:11,359
Speaker 3: You're playing right into my hands here.

474
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 1: Scott's right, and he knows the same thing to me

475
00:25:14,880 --> 00:25:16,879
Speaker 1: when I ask him about relativity and stuff.

476
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:19,880
Speaker 3: So anyway, it's all right, oh nobody in relativity, it depends,

477
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,160
Speaker 3: but the answers are all correct, even if they contradict

478
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:23,360
Speaker 3: each other whatever.

479
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:27,400
Speaker 1: All right, So Scott agrees with Kelly that it depends

480
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 1: when we're talking about biology. We are going to take

481
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 1: a break, and when we get back, we're going to

482
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:36,680
Speaker 1: talk about if speciation ever unhappens, and probably it depends.

483
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 3: I agree with both of you that it depends. Is

484
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:01,359
Speaker 3: the answer of violence. I'm just not sure I agree

485
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 3: with you whether you should say it's shamefaced or not.

486
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: Oh, all right, well we're back and without shame, we

487
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:12,679
Speaker 1: are going to now talk about biology and all right, Scott,

488
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: So you get the process of speciation happening, Does it

489
00:26:17,080 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: ever unhappen?

490
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:24,400
Speaker 5: Yes? I mean so, first off, evolution has no direction

491
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,480
Speaker 5: to it. It just describes change through time. So in

492
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:31,320
Speaker 5: the same way that specs or populations can evolve along

493
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:34,919
Speaker 5: that continuum in one direction, they can also evolve in

494
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,680
Speaker 5: the other direction. That's just evolution. That's the same thing

495
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:43,560
Speaker 5: when thinking about measuring reproductive isolation and finding populations kind

496
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 5: of along that continuum that exhibit partial reproductive isolation but

497
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:52,640
Speaker 5: not complete reproductive isolation. We absolutely have observed populations retreating

498
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 5: back to something more panmitic, where they're exchanging genes more regularly.

499
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 5: So there's an example. There's a wonderful group of fishes

500
00:27:01,160 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 5: up in the northwestern United States and Canada called the

501
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 5: three spine stickleback, and they're really cool little tiny fishes

502
00:27:08,840 --> 00:27:11,200
Speaker 5: and they live in all different parts of these rivers

503
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 5: and lakes across the northwest.

504
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 3: Is it three or is it three ish? It's exactly three.

505
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:21,879
Speaker 5: This one's three because there's also a nine spine stickleback

506
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 5: as well. So the three spine stickleback has recolonized all

507
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:33,160
Speaker 5: these lakes that just you know, fifteen thousand, seventeen thousand

508
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 5: years ago were covered in glaciers. So we know when

509
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 5: tiny equals zero, and they've recolonized these lakes and very quickly.

510
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:45,240
Speaker 5: They commonly will adapt to different parts of the habitat.

511
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:47,120
Speaker 5: So when you go to some of these lakes, you'll

512
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:50,040
Speaker 5: see kind of an open water form that's swimming and

513
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 5: feeding in the open water, and you'll find one that's

514
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,959
Speaker 5: more a bottom dweller that's feeding along the bottom. They

515
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:58,400
Speaker 5: have different environments, there's a different potential body shape that's better,

516
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 5: so they start kind of urging very quickly in some

517
00:28:02,480 --> 00:28:06,120
Speaker 5: of those lakes. Scientists have been watching them, observing them,

518
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 5: and in one lake, Paxton Lake, there were these distinct

519
00:28:09,720 --> 00:28:13,879
Speaker 5: lineages that then started hybridizing and formed back into a

520
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 5: single species, and that was likely because of human changes

521
00:28:18,960 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 5: to that singular lake. They made the lake a little

522
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 5: more turbid, so you couldn't see as well, the fish

523
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 5: couldn't identify the lineages very well, and they just merged

524
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 5: back into one distinct lineage.

525
00:28:29,800 --> 00:28:32,119
Speaker 3: How does that happen? I'm confused because it feels like

526
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:36,320
Speaker 3: to speciate means to move in different directions, and there's

527
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:38,680
Speaker 3: lots and lots of ways that can happen, and so

528
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:41,120
Speaker 3: it makes sense that like two species go in two

529
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:44,760
Speaker 3: random directions, that's fine, But to come back together, they

530
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 3: have to like both evolve in the same direction, don't they.

531
00:28:47,640 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 3: Isn't that totally improbable?

532
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 5: Yeah? So, so the way in which things come back

533
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:57,400
Speaker 5: together is due to this genetic exchange, the exchange of DNA,

534
00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 5: and that homogenizes, to some agree, the differences between them

535
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 5: and pulls them back together.

536
00:29:03,520 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 3: But if they were different species, how do they exchange DNA?

537
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:10,800
Speaker 5: That's a great question. So the change in this specific

538
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 5: lake was turbidity, and so one of the ways these

539
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:18,080
Speaker 5: two fishes stayed separate is they were identifying each other

540
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 5: by what they look like. And I think the males

541
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:24,200
Speaker 5: have different colorations between the two lineages, and so at

542
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:27,480
Speaker 5: some point the females and the males couldn't see that anymore,

543
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:29,960
Speaker 5: and they were very very closely related.

544
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 3: Still, I'm terrified where this is going. Are you saying

545
00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 3: that they accidentally made it with the wrong people because

546
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 3: they couldn't see because the lake was too murky?

547
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, yes, So they could actually exchange DNA, they

548
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 8: just didn't because they preferred not to because they could

549
00:29:48,840 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 8: see what they were doing.

550
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 5: Yeah.

551
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 3: Wow.

552
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 5: And if you take the story and go to another

553
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 5: place where there's amazing fish diversity, like the Riff Valley

554
00:29:56,240 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 5: lakes in Africa, like Lake Victoria has some insane number

555
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 5: sick lid fishes that have also evolved in the last

556
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 5: fifteen thousand years, some estimated as a five hundred different species.

557
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 5: Same story there. There's turbidity issues with humans being around

558
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 5: and stirring up the water a little bit, and there's

559
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 5: some fishes that live at two different depths. Oh, here

560
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:19,360
Speaker 5: we go. We can start talking about physics. I don't

561
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 5: even understand the physics of it. But like red light

562
00:30:22,480 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 5: and blue like go at different depths, and so the

563
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 5: fishes have evolved to use that signal based on what

564
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:31,440
Speaker 5: depths they live at, and when it becomes a little

565
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 5: more turbid, they actually can't see each other's differences anymore,

566
00:30:36,160 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 5: and the males and females will mate more often, and

567
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:41,760
Speaker 5: so you can actually see that continuum in turbid waters,

568
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 5: these two distinct species are in fact not and when

569
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 5: you get into the clearer parts of Lake Victoria, they

570
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 5: are still distinct and you can see that continuum as well.

571
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,320
Speaker 1: Do you think it got really foggy for a while

572
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,560
Speaker 1: in our past and that's why Homo sapiens and Neanderthals

573
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: started breeding. We were just confused.

574
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:04,920
Speaker 5: I don't touch human stories. I don't get anywhere close

575
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 5: to those.

576
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: We had Scott Solomon on to touch those stories, so

577
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:08,719
Speaker 1: we're perfect.

578
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, And when those fish wake up in the morning

579
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 3: and see what they've done, are they like, oh no,

580
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 3: how am I going to tell my family? The physics

581
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 3: there is interesting because you know, water absorbs light at

582
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,080
Speaker 3: certain wavelengths, but the efficiency of it to absorb light

583
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 3: depends on the wavelength, which is why you get like

584
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:30,160
Speaker 3: red and blue light at different depths.

585
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:35,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, heay, physics, So speciation can unhappen, or you can

586
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 1: go backwards in the process, and most of what we've

587
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 1: talked about has involved like being able to you know,

588
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: recognize based on patterns or color or song. What do

589
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: you do when you don't have any of those clues

590
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 1: as a scientist and you're like digging up fossils and

591
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:54,080
Speaker 1: you're trying to figure out species for dinosaurs, Like what

592
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 1: do we rely on?

593
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 5: Then that's right, that's right. So the working definition that

594
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 5: my lab uses or we study diploid sexually reproducing insects

595
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 5: is going to be different than someone who studies a

596
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:11,400
Speaker 5: fossil or an asexual species or some other thing that

597
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:14,840
Speaker 5: doesn't quite fit in those definitions. And so that's a

598
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 5: good example. Scientists will use a definition that's appropriate to

599
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 5: the organism or group they're studying. And so obviously fossils,

600
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 5: you can still think about things that I think about

601
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 5: with living sexually reproducing lineages. So you can study some

602
00:32:31,280 --> 00:32:34,880
Speaker 5: degrees of reproductive isolation. So one thing is just geography.

603
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:37,239
Speaker 5: If they live in two different areas, they're not going

604
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 5: to have the opportunity to exchange genes. That's in some

605
00:32:40,040 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 5: level a measure of reproductive isolation. And then even more specifically,

606
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,880
Speaker 5: if you think about males and females exchanging DNA. There

607
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:53,719
Speaker 5: is a mechanical nature to that exchange, and so mechanical

608
00:32:53,800 --> 00:32:57,720
Speaker 5: isolation is actually something that's really important for extent living species.

609
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:02,160
Speaker 5: It's also important for so if there's some mechanical difference,

610
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,640
Speaker 5: you could actually measure reproductive isolation as well, But then

611
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:09,880
Speaker 5: you are more likely to use something like a morphological

612
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 5: species definition, where the morphology is what This is the

613
00:33:13,360 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 5: only thing you have, and so you have to use

614
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 5: that to define that lineage. And that's absolutely appropriate and

615
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 5: also important for our living species as well. We use

616
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:23,680
Speaker 5: morphology as well.

617
00:33:23,760 --> 00:33:26,040
Speaker 1: So Daniel has a dog that's a mixed between a

618
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:29,800
Speaker 1: German shepherd into Chihuahua, And so does the mechanic.

619
00:33:29,600 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 2: Can you get confused when you're imagining the mechanics?

620
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 7: Does?

621
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 2: Yeah?

622
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:36,520
Speaker 3: This is true, This is true. We did DNA testing.

623
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 3: He's a rescue from insnatus. We were not there that

624
00:33:39,520 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 3: epic night when this happened. Nobody knows. There's some sort

625
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 3: of physics and biology mysteries there.

626
00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:49,000
Speaker 1: So I feel like mechanics can lead you astray, and

627
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: so I guess you just do the best you can

628
00:33:50,680 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 1: because I can't imagine how that worked.

629
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 3: But he's really cute. He's sort of like a smaller

630
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 3: German shepherd with sad eyes.

631
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 5: Ah, I have no idea about how that could work. Well,

632
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 5: there's so many reproductive barriers I'm thinking about here. There's

633
00:34:07,440 --> 00:34:11,399
Speaker 5: the mechanical things that happened before copulation. There's also these

634
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:14,000
Speaker 5: things that can happen after copulation, right, that are related

635
00:34:14,040 --> 00:34:17,359
Speaker 5: to like inviable or infertile hybrids. And one of them

636
00:34:17,400 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 5: is with this strange combination, is how a potential female

637
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,520
Speaker 5: chihuahua could even have a baby of that size. So

638
00:34:26,560 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 5: there's that degree of you know, maybe the female dies

639
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 5: during the birth of the hybrid offspring. Is another barrier

640
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,960
Speaker 5: because even though genetic change occurs, and even though that

641
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 5: hybrid offspring is potentially viable, if the female dies during pregnancy,

642
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 5: that's also gene flow has stopped.

643
00:34:46,960 --> 00:34:49,240
Speaker 3: Because dogs usually have multiple puppies.

644
00:34:49,320 --> 00:34:52,040
Speaker 5: Right, So yeah, this is getting wild really quickly.

645
00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, all right, all right, let's move on to

646
00:34:54,680 --> 00:34:55,400
Speaker 1: safer ground.

647
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 3: Wait, but on this question of like the definition of

648
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:05,800
Speaker 3: species again, Now we have like multiple different definitions of species, morphological, genotypical, ecological.

649
00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:09,839
Speaker 3: I'm confused because like which do we use? Is there

650
00:35:09,880 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 3: no actual arbiter or are we just like saying, look,

651
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 3: this is kind of fuzzy in a different context, we

652
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:17,760
Speaker 3: have different definitions, Yeah.

653
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:21,840
Speaker 5: I mean, I think depending on the group of organisms

654
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 5: you study, you have to define species within that natural system.

655
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:30,359
Speaker 5: The most commonly used definition, I would say, is this

656
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 5: biological species definition or biological species concept, which is all

657
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 5: about the degree to exchange DNA with individuals within other populations.

658
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 5: So it's this reproduction that seems to be core. Whether

659
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:46,800
Speaker 5: you decide to exchange genes, whether you run into those individuals,

660
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 5: those are all different ways in which you can measure

661
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 5: the chance that you would reproduce. If you study asexual

662
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:57,320
Speaker 5: bacteria that are living in the soil, you're going to

663
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:02,200
Speaker 5: have a very different way of defining species. So you know,

664
00:36:02,280 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 5: microbiologists will define the genetic components that are part of

665
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 5: that bacteria and maybe even a little bit about the

666
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:13,799
Speaker 5: ecological environment they live in, and combine that information to

667
00:36:13,920 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 5: define that species of bacteria. So it just it does depend.

668
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 5: But you talked about like an arbiter. The US Endangered

669
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:26,360
Speaker 5: Species Act of course has to have a definition of

670
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,480
Speaker 5: species in it, and it for the most part uses

671
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:34,360
Speaker 5: this biological species concept. It uses measures of reproductive isolation

672
00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 5: as a way to measure what is and what is

673
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:39,440
Speaker 5: not a species. So that actually has a legal definition

674
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 5: and is applied in courts within the US and other

675
00:36:43,400 --> 00:36:46,439
Speaker 5: countries have their own definitions. And when you have any

676
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 5: protection for an endangered or a threatened species, you need

677
00:36:51,040 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 5: to define what that is.

678
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:54,760
Speaker 3: So can I ask you a question about the animal

679
00:36:54,800 --> 00:36:57,720
Speaker 3: appears on the flag of the best state in the United.

680
00:36:57,560 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 2: States, California.

681
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 5: I don't recall being a bear on the State of

682
00:37:02,000 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 5: Texas's flag. Oh, slice is just a big star.

683
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 3: We have an animal on our flag, and I think

684
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 3: that's better. Obviously, because we're pro biology here.

685
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:11,480
Speaker 5: I love it.

686
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 3: In any case, I want to ask about grizzlies and

687
00:37:14,320 --> 00:37:17,360
Speaker 3: polar bears. Tell us about the history. Here are the

688
00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:21,160
Speaker 3: different species, Can they interbreed? Why don't they? And is

689
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:25,120
Speaker 3: that even more outrageous than chihuahua's and German shepherds.

690
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,240
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, it's a great question, and it's really getting

691
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 5: back to some of the things we've already talked about.

692
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:33,720
Speaker 5: So you have the grizzly, you have the polar They are,

693
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 5: in all intents and purposes, living historically in different environments,

694
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 5: adapting to different conditions, but those conditions have changed, just

695
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:45,840
Speaker 5: like the turbidity in a lake, right, and it's causing

696
00:37:45,880 --> 00:37:48,799
Speaker 5: these individuals to run into each other more often. And

697
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:52,360
Speaker 5: so some of those barriers have been observed to break

698
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 5: down to some degree.

699
00:37:56,840 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 3: After a crazy night out, the polar bear wakes up

700
00:37:59,280 --> 00:38:00,719
Speaker 3: next to a grizzly you're telling.

701
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 5: Me, it doesn't mean that those two species will collapse.

702
00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:08,279
Speaker 5: It just means that there's some degree of hybridization, but

703
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,279
Speaker 5: some degree of gene flow is allowed even under a

704
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 5: biological species concept. It just means that you can allow

705
00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:18,399
Speaker 5: so much hybridization, but as long as those differences can

706
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:21,839
Speaker 5: still be maintained, that is an allowable amount of hybridization.

707
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 5: So this process is ongoing. Environmental change is ongoing, especially

708
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,239
Speaker 5: for the polar bear, and so we don't know what's

709
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 5: going to happen with these two lineages, but you are

710
00:38:31,800 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 5: seeing a little bit of a breakdown in those barriers

711
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:37,439
Speaker 5: that is happening in real time.

712
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 3: So there really are bears out there that have like

713
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:42,440
Speaker 3: one polar bear parent and one grizzly bear parent, And

714
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 3: what do they look.

715
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 5: Like they are? Yeah, as most will show, there are intermediates.

716
00:38:46,880 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: Wow, incredible so you talked about RNA viruses, and you

717
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:54,799
Speaker 1: talked about asexually reproducing bacteria, and so all of these

718
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:59,279
Speaker 1: things have genetic sequences in them. So why can't we

719
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: just say, you know, if you are five percent different

720
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 1: at the sequence level than another population, you're a different species,

721
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 1: And then everybody could agree, why can't we do something

722
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: like that?

723
00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 3: I have to interrupt because I googled grizzly polar bear

724
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 3: hybrid and discovered that they're called groller bears or pisly bears.

725
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 2: Pisly bear is pretty cute.

726
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 3: I like that and they look pretty awesome. All right,

727
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:26,959
Speaker 3: back to your regular schedule question.

728
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 5: Sorry, yes, okay, Yeah, So the genetic thing is is

729
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 5: a good question, and genetics is an important way of

730
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 5: measuring differences. So it is, it is incorporated into a

731
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 5: lot of studies of speciation, and it is incorporated into

732
00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:43,800
Speaker 5: sometimes how we are defining what is a new species.

733
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 5: It's one piece of information. The challenging part is depending

734
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 5: on what group of animals or plants or bacteria you studying,

735
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:57,000
Speaker 5: that magic let's say five percent is going to be

736
00:39:57,040 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 5: different for every group. So you know, there are insects

737
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 5: that are living, you know, almost cosmopolitan across the globe,

738
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,920
Speaker 5: one single species, so there's genetic differences that are pretty

739
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:10,839
Speaker 5: strong between them, but they for the most part, are

740
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 5: still one singular species, just linked by you know, a

741
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 5: very widely distributed population that might be very different than

742
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,960
Speaker 5: a small, little endemic plant that just lives in a

743
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 5: couple different canyons and let's say California, where they don't

744
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,320
Speaker 5: exchange genes very often, so they have a pretty strong difference.

745
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 5: So you have a global population with little differences, you

746
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:36,240
Speaker 5: have a very close geographics lineage that has pretty distinct

747
00:40:36,320 --> 00:40:40,000
Speaker 5: genetic differences, and so it's really hard to find a

748
00:40:40,000 --> 00:40:42,439
Speaker 5: magic number that fits everything. And then if you bring

749
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 5: in things like asexual reproduction or the weird thing that

750
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 5: you know, bees, wasps and ants do the haplodiploid thing

751
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:55,040
Speaker 5: that creates genetic differences between lineages that are very very strong,

752
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 5: and so there's just no one size fittle for the genetics.

753
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,319
Speaker 5: And then even if you look within the genetics, you

754
00:41:01,320 --> 00:41:03,399
Speaker 5: look at one gene they might be completely the same.

755
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 5: You look at another one and they're almost completely different,

756
00:41:06,160 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 5: and so it just it's hard to capture that with

757
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 5: just one logic metric.

758
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:13,440
Speaker 2: Of DNA it depends.

759
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:16,439
Speaker 5: It depends, sorry to be so boring.

760
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 2: No, no, I love it depends that.

761
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:22,080
Speaker 1: To me, that means ecology and evolutionary biology is always interesting.

762
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,840
Speaker 1: There's always some fun reason to dig into a system

763
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper because it's probably different than what

764
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 1: you were doing last week, even though you thought it

765
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: would be the same.

766
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I.

767
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:31,319
Speaker 5: Don't know, I love that same.

768
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: All Right, we're going to take another break, and when

769
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: we get back, Scott is going to actually walk us

770
00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:38,440
Speaker 1: through the process he went through to identify one of

771
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 1: the over twenty.

772
00:41:39,200 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 2: Insects species that he has named. All Right, and we're back.

773
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 1: And so we've talked about a bunch of different ways

774
00:42:05,080 --> 00:42:08,759
Speaker 1: that you can go about making the argument that two

775
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:12,839
Speaker 1: different lineages are actually different species. And so Scott as

776
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:17,800
Speaker 1: somebody who has identified tens of species, which is super awesome, amazing.

777
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 1: Can you give us like an example of you know,

778
00:42:20,320 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 1: here's the species you identified, and here is the multiple

779
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: different pieces of evidence you brought to Bayer to make

780
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: that argument.

781
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:30,120
Speaker 5: Sure, yeah, happy to do it. Certainly. Historically, the way

782
00:42:30,200 --> 00:42:33,760
Speaker 5: in which species have been identified for millennia is based

783
00:42:33,800 --> 00:42:37,680
Speaker 5: on what they look like, So that's their morphology. They're

784
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:42,239
Speaker 5: physical features. That is still very very important to this day.

785
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:46,760
Speaker 5: But my lab tends to do something called this whole

786
00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 5: area of naming species and classifying species, we call this taxonomy,

787
00:42:50,960 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 5: and my lab tends to adopt something called integrative taxonomy,

788
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:58,880
Speaker 5: where we take as many pieces of information from disparate

789
00:42:58,960 --> 00:43:03,080
Speaker 5: areas of biology to come together to make a conclusion

790
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 5: about whether something's a new species or not. And so

791
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:09,880
Speaker 5: that obviously is going to involve their morphology, that's going

792
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:16,320
Speaker 5: to evolve their potentially their DNA. So looking at genetics, behavior, ecology, geography.

793
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 5: So those are all the things we're thinking about when

794
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 5: we're trying to define a new species. But then let

795
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 5: me walk you through one of ours. Because, strangely enough,

796
00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 5: even though I have described or our lab as a

797
00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:29,360
Speaker 5: team has described many new species, I am not a

798
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 5: trained entomologist. I'm an evolutionary biologist that studies a very

799
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:37,919
Speaker 5: intricate system of trees and the weird herbivores that live

800
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 5: on them and the predators that attack those herbivores. So,

801
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 5: just like a food chain you learned about in elementary school,

802
00:43:44,800 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 5: plant herbivore predator.

803
00:43:47,120 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: Just to interrupt real quick, they must be very confused

804
00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:51,680
Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom because they named you a fellow

805
00:43:51,680 --> 00:43:54,920
Speaker 1: of the Royal Entomological Society. So I think you get

806
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:56,840
Speaker 1: to say you're an entomologist.

807
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:57,600
Speaker 3: Not to hear this podcast.

808
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:01,000
Speaker 1: Okay, So anyway, go I call you an entomologist as

809
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:02,080
Speaker 1: well as other hats.

810
00:44:02,120 --> 00:44:03,319
Speaker 2: But anyway, go on, but.

811
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:04,840
Speaker 3: You have to say it in a British accent to

812
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:05,359
Speaker 3: be doing key.

813
00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 5: Thank you, I really appreciate that.

814
00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 2: Okay.

815
00:44:09,640 --> 00:44:13,240
Speaker 5: So I'll actually take you through the very first insect

816
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 5: we discovered, and that can help you kind of understand

817
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 5: the way in which we approached this process, because I

818
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 5: really didn't know how to do it either. So it

819
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:25,719
Speaker 5: starts off as Ky alluded to earlier, when I was

820
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:29,440
Speaker 5: on vacation with my family. I was walking around some

821
00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 5: sand dunes on the coast of Florida with my daughter

822
00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 5: when she was about four years old, and we observed

823
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:39,279
Speaker 5: this unique pattern. Discovered something kind of unique, which I

824
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:42,279
Speaker 5: can get into the biology of this critter later, but

825
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:44,879
Speaker 5: ultimately it was weird enough that I brought it back

826
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:47,800
Speaker 5: to the lab. Something crazy crawled out of these samples

827
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 5: I took, and so I had something that I'd never

828
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 5: seen before, and that started this process of is this

829
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:56,360
Speaker 5: new or did someone else observe this in the past.

830
00:44:56,680 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 3: What was it doing that caught your attention?

831
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 5: Okay, we could do that too. So it was a beautiful,

832
00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 5: iridescent green, almost purplish, tiny wasp about a miller meter

833
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:13,400
Speaker 5: or two that was attacking a group of herbivores that

834
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:16,520
Speaker 5: my lab studies called gal wasps. Now, gal wasps in

835
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:19,799
Speaker 5: and of themselves are really interesting because they are little

836
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:23,399
Speaker 5: tiny wasps that attack oak trees and induce the oak

837
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:27,280
Speaker 5: to grow a little tiny tumor or home, and the insect,

838
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 5: the juvenile insects, live inside that tumor where they feed,

839
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 5: they're protected from the environment, and ultimately emerges an adult

840
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 5: unless they're attacked by a predator. And so this is

841
00:45:36,600 --> 00:45:40,160
Speaker 5: one of the predators. This predator also happens to do

842
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 5: something really interesting though, because it manipulates the behavior of

843
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 5: the gal wasp. So the gal wasp feeds and grows

844
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:50,920
Speaker 5: to an adult. It starts cutting a little tunnel out

845
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 5: of the wood, but ultimately stops during that process and

846
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 5: cuts a hole only about twenty five percent smaller than

847
00:45:58,160 --> 00:45:59,800
Speaker 5: normal size, so the head gets stuck.

848
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:00,600
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh.

849
00:46:00,640 --> 00:46:02,920
Speaker 5: And so this is what we found in the field

850
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:07,280
Speaker 5: and brought back to laboratory. And then weeks two months

851
00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 5: past and another little wasp was living in those same

852
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:14,360
Speaker 5: little goals. It burrows its way through the body of

853
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 5: the gal wasp and emerges through its face. Oh so cool.

854
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 3: Wow, even for people who've listened to lots of parasite

855
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 3: life cycles, that's pretty shocking.

856
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 5: Yes, and so lucky for me. My colleague, doctor Kelly Wienersmith,

857
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 5: was right down the hall at the time, and I

858
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:34,759
Speaker 5: showed her all of this stuff and said, you know,

859
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 5: I know, you study parasites and how they manipulate the

860
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,759
Speaker 5: behavior of their hosts. Could anything like that be happening here?

861
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:42,920
Speaker 5: What is going on? And so she and I dived

862
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:46,160
Speaker 5: into this for years and published some cool papers about

863
00:46:46,160 --> 00:46:49,480
Speaker 5: this work, including some really nice experiments to see why

864
00:46:49,520 --> 00:46:54,640
Speaker 5: this manipulation was important. Basically, these measly little predators can't

865
00:46:54,640 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 5: cut themselves out of the wood on their own, so

866
00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 5: they really need the host to burrow its way first,

867
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:02,160
Speaker 5: and then they just urge through the body and cut

868
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 5: a hole straight through the face and emerge right through it.

869
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:07,360
Speaker 3: So wow, yes, and now I can see why Kelly

870
00:47:07,400 --> 00:47:10,760
Speaker 3: got that look of expectant amusement. When I asked this question,

871
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 3: she knew what was coming.

872
00:47:12,360 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 2: I didn't know what example he was going to pick.

873
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:16,839
Speaker 5: Well, I like this one, Kelly, because it's the first one.

874
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:19,960
Speaker 5: So it caused me to really ask this question myself.

875
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:23,560
Speaker 5: Of so we get this crazy biology. Kelly helps with

876
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 5: all the cool work and she leads this really cool

877
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 5: research project that we publish, but then ultimately we're left

878
00:47:30,120 --> 00:47:33,400
Speaker 5: with this critter and asking, Okay, we observe these differences,

879
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:36,920
Speaker 5: but is this something that's new? And that's where you

880
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:40,160
Speaker 5: know this kind of how do you even define and

881
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 5: decide what is a new species? And so, you know,

882
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:48,320
Speaker 5: the first step for us was finding out, even within

883
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:51,560
Speaker 5: the courses scale, what is this. So we knew it

884
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 5: was an insect, we knew it was a wasp, we

885
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:57,200
Speaker 5: knew it was likely a group of parisitoid wasps in

886
00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,520
Speaker 5: this group called the calcitoid. So we got a little

887
00:47:59,560 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 5: bit farther or down the taxonomic nomenclature. But at that

888
00:48:03,160 --> 00:48:06,880
Speaker 5: point we were struggling. So we reached out to some experts.

889
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 5: We reached out to some folks that are trained in

890
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 5: that group. They said, yeah, it's probably in this family.

891
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 5: It might be in this genus, and then we started

892
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:19,480
Speaker 5: digging a little deeper. Ultimately we did find some morphological

893
00:48:19,520 --> 00:48:22,160
Speaker 5: features of this very tiny wasp that led us to

894
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 5: this one group. And luckily for us, there was a

895
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:29,439
Speaker 5: specialist in that group that had written a nice dichotomous key,

896
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:32,360
Speaker 5: and these are wonderful. They're like kind of like choose

897
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,719
Speaker 5: your own adventure, but for what kind of critter you're

898
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:37,759
Speaker 5: looking at. So it gives you choices. Does it have

899
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:39,920
Speaker 5: or it's antennae on the top of its side or

900
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 5: on the side of it said, does it have seven

901
00:48:41,600 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 5: hairs on its back legs? Is it green? Does it

902
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:47,400
Speaker 5: have this or that? Choose go to step three or greenish.

903
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 5: If it's greenish, go to step four. If it has this,

904
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:52,799
Speaker 5: go to step seven of it has this. And so we,

905
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 5: even as non specialists, were able to kind of follow

906
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:59,839
Speaker 5: this path. But what was really exciting is every time

907
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:04,040
Speaker 5: we followed this dichotomous key to its ultimate end, it

908
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:06,799
Speaker 5: never resulted in the thing we were looking at under

909
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:09,239
Speaker 5: the microscope. It just didn't fit. We would get to

910
00:49:09,239 --> 00:49:11,120
Speaker 5: one end of the diaconomist key and would say, you

911
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:14,719
Speaker 5: have found species X from Nova Scotia and we were

912
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:17,040
Speaker 5: sitting in the middle of Texas, or you have had

913
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:20,799
Speaker 5: species Y and it's from Costa Rica. See, so each

914
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:23,239
Speaker 5: time it didn't actually pan out.

915
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:26,279
Speaker 3: So somebody had written a guide to figuring out which

916
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:28,279
Speaker 3: kind of wasp you have? Right, every time you went

917
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 3: through you ended up on the different wrong.

918
00:49:30,080 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 5: Wasp, yes, right, right, So that was one step. So

919
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:38,359
Speaker 5: then we complimented that morphological work with some genetic work.

920
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:41,399
Speaker 5: We sequenced a short region of the DNA and tried

921
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,400
Speaker 5: to compare it to all the other sequences of the

922
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 5: same region of DNA that have been sequenced across the world.

923
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 5: And again we found something that sort of matched but

924
00:49:51,239 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 5: wasn't exactly the same. So each time kind of the

925
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:57,600
Speaker 5: same answer. If you combine that with then this very

926
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,400
Speaker 5: interesting behavior, so we could call this general their ecology,

927
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 5: their living environment. That also didn't match with anything that

928
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:08,799
Speaker 5: had been described from this genus before. So collectively, all

929
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:13,000
Speaker 5: of these pieces of information geography, ecology, behavior, genetics, and

930
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 5: morphology led us to the conclusion that we had in

931
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:20,879
Speaker 5: fact found something that we thought was new. We wrote

932
00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:23,360
Speaker 5: this up in a paper, and then there's the ultimate arbitrat,

933
00:50:23,520 --> 00:50:27,040
Speaker 5: which is peer review. The scientific review process is wonderful.

934
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 5: This is sent off to a journal that specializes this

935
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:33,320
Speaker 5: won well for them. I didn't know what I was doing.

936
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:36,200
Speaker 3: Have you only had positive experiences with peer review?

937
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:41,440
Speaker 5: It's important, okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yes, I get all that,

938
00:50:41,520 --> 00:50:45,440
Speaker 5: and it's not perfect. But for this process, we were

939
00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:48,359
Speaker 5: treading in waters and we were just trying to find

940
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 5: our way. We needed a little bit of oversight, and

941
00:50:51,640 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 5: so we sent it to a journal that specializes in

942
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:58,879
Speaker 5: this area of taxonomy, and it went to some specialists anonymously.

943
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 5: They reviewed our work definitely said it seems like we

944
00:51:03,520 --> 00:51:10,800
Speaker 5: were amateurs in the review process, which they were, right, fair, fair,

945
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:15,359
Speaker 5: but they agreed that our version of the story, which

946
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 5: I wrote the scientific paper almost like I'm talking to

947
00:51:18,080 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 5: you right now. It was kind of like, we did this,

948
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:21,879
Speaker 5: then we did this, then we did this, and we

949
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 5: determined it was new, but they agreed, and so they

950
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 5: gave us some feedback. We modified our documents to be

951
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 5: a little bit more in that realm of taxonomy, and

952
00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:35,560
Speaker 5: that paper was published and we were able to name

953
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 5: a new species and it was really fun and Kelly

954
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 5: and I even got to choose the name.

955
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:43,480
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, and Scott picked the coolest name. And so Scott,

956
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: go ahead, why did you what did you name the species?

957
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 5: So it's in the genus Eudaris, which we mispronounced for

958
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 5: the first year we were describing the thing and it's

959
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:56,320
Speaker 5: specific epithet. So the species part is you Darus set

960
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 5: and Set is named for the Egyptian god of evil

961
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:05,320
Speaker 5: and chaos, who also happened to cut up its brother

962
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 5: Osiris and a put it in a crypt and cut

963
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:11,960
Speaker 5: it into many pieces, which is exactly what this little

964
00:52:12,000 --> 00:52:15,239
Speaker 5: tiny wasp does within the crypt it lives in, within

965
00:52:15,280 --> 00:52:17,439
Speaker 5: these oak trees, it cuts up the gal wasp into

966
00:52:17,440 --> 00:52:20,920
Speaker 5: its itty bitty pieces. It's very very similar. So Udara

967
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:23,799
Speaker 5: set is the name of our new species.

968
00:52:24,680 --> 00:52:26,600
Speaker 1: That when Scott was like, oh, you know, I've got

969
00:52:26,600 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: an idea, I was thinking, what if we name it

970
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: after the Egyptian god Set and he trapped his brother

971
00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:32,960
Speaker 1: into crypt and scattered his body parts, and I was like,

972
00:52:33,239 --> 00:52:34,200
Speaker 1: my mind was blown.

973
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:36,400
Speaker 2: I was like, we don't have to think about this anymore.

974
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:40,120
Speaker 2: That is absolutely the name that we're picking. And anyway, yes,

975
00:52:40,440 --> 00:52:41,880
Speaker 2: props to Scott. That was amazing.

976
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 3: Well, that is an incredible story. So does this mean

977
00:52:45,040 --> 00:52:49,120
Speaker 3: that you have particularly keen eyes for identifying new insects,

978
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:54,600
Speaker 3: or that we are surrounded by undiscovered insect species or both.

979
00:52:55,280 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 5: It's definitely more of the latter. We don't know even

980
00:52:59,600 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 5: the speed. Within some major US cities, we're discovering species

981
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 5: within the city live in so of Houston, which is

982
00:53:06,239 --> 00:53:08,520
Speaker 5: the third or fourth largest city in the United States.

983
00:53:09,239 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 5: We're discovering them on the oak tree just outside the

984
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:16,319
Speaker 5: front door of the biology building at Rece University. So

985
00:53:16,640 --> 00:53:19,680
Speaker 5: we're finding them everywhere. And so that's the main part,

986
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:21,920
Speaker 5: especially when you start thinking about things that are very,

987
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 5: very small, and then flipping to the first part. We

988
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:28,600
Speaker 5: rely on specialists to really get down to the nitty

989
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 5: gritty of some of these new species, whether it be

990
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:33,239
Speaker 5: a gall wasp for one of these peristroid wasps, or

991
00:53:33,280 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 5: I even work a little bit in a group of beetles.

992
00:53:36,600 --> 00:53:40,640
Speaker 5: Specialists are so important to this. My role is that

993
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:44,800
Speaker 5: my lab undergraduate graduate students postdocs, we study a system,

994
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:48,319
Speaker 5: a system that involves an oak tree, a group of

995
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:51,719
Speaker 5: peculiar herbivores that I've always found interesting called gall wasp

996
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:54,920
Speaker 5: that induce this weird tumor that they live inside. And

997
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:57,839
Speaker 5: then because they live in this kind of predictable thing

998
00:53:57,960 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 5: in space and time. This gall this resource, they've attracted

999
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:04,880
Speaker 5: a huge diverse community of natural enemies, of predators that

1000
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 5: eat them during different times of the year. So this

1001
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:11,400
Speaker 5: little system. We are specialists in that system, and we're

1002
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:14,040
Speaker 5: good to get to the point where, hey, have we

1003
00:54:14,080 --> 00:54:17,399
Speaker 5: ever seen this before? Maybe not, We should reach out

1004
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:19,920
Speaker 5: to someone, and so then we link up with specialists

1005
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 5: in whatever group, whether it be a parasitoid wasp or

1006
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:26,520
Speaker 5: a goal wasp, or even a plant. You know, sometimes

1007
00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:31,279
Speaker 5: we find weird parasitic plants attacking our goals. And all

1008
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:34,040
Speaker 5: of those are you know, a combination of our natural

1009
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 5: history observations in nature, which we work hard at and

1010
00:54:37,960 --> 00:54:41,879
Speaker 5: linking those observations up with specialists, and then we also

1011
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:44,799
Speaker 5: do the DNA sequencing, which really helps seal the deal.

1012
00:54:45,120 --> 00:54:46,680
Speaker 1: I also want to put a little plug in for

1013
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:48,440
Speaker 1: museums here, because like when I was a kid and

1014
00:54:48,440 --> 00:54:50,719
Speaker 1: I went to the Smithsonian, I was like, Oh, they've

1015
00:54:50,719 --> 00:54:52,920
Speaker 1: got dinosaur bones, And I guess I assumed that, like,

1016
00:54:53,520 --> 00:54:55,479
Speaker 1: you know, most of the stuff they had was out

1017
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 1: there for you to see, but actually they have loads

1018
00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: of experts that are like watching over massive collections behind

1019
00:55:02,680 --> 00:55:05,399
Speaker 1: closed doors where you know, only other experts get to see,

1020
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:08,239
Speaker 1: and they've got like drawer after drawer after drawer of

1021
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: insects where you can go and be like, I'm pretty

1022
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 1: sure my insect is different than this other insect, And

1023
00:55:13,160 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 1: so you go and you bring pictures of your insect

1024
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 1: and then you can compare it to the actual insect

1025
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 1: that was used to describe, you know, another species a

1026
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:22,279
Speaker 1: while ago. And I probably should have just passed this

1027
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: over to Scott because he knows much more about this,

1028
00:55:24,080 --> 00:55:26,640
Speaker 1: but I got very excited. And there's loads of stuff

1029
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:29,720
Speaker 1: behind those doors that are like massively useful for scientists

1030
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: when we're trying to describe biodiversity.

1031
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,280
Speaker 5: Yes, one hundred percent, Like right here in the US,

1032
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:38,120
Speaker 5: the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, those

1033
00:55:38,120 --> 00:55:41,200
Speaker 5: two museums have been so important to our research. And

1034
00:55:41,239 --> 00:55:45,439
Speaker 5: then even regionally, a huge university just to our north,

1035
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:49,120
Speaker 5: Texas am has a huge entomology collection, insect collection, and

1036
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:51,799
Speaker 5: all of those are such great resources for us to

1037
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 5: compare and to link up with these specialists that work

1038
00:55:54,600 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 5: on these groups day in and day out. Yeah, extremely

1039
00:55:57,640 --> 00:55:58,720
Speaker 5: helpful and important.

1040
00:55:58,920 --> 00:56:03,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got this amazing question from a listener named Boris,

1041
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 1: and let's go ahead and listen to it.

1042
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:09,239
Speaker 7: Now, Hey, Kelly and Daniel. I recently watched a video

1043
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:13,600
Speaker 7: about something called CAN nine transmissible a nero tumor or CTVT,

1044
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:18,480
Speaker 7: and it was presented as like, quote, a single cell, brainless, boneless,

1045
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:22,760
Speaker 7: asexually reproducing species in the genus canis that it's dogs.

1046
00:56:23,400 --> 00:56:26,319
Speaker 7: I think that's really fascinating. It's genomes split off from

1047
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:29,320
Speaker 7: dogs about eleven thousand years ago and in this short

1048
00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:32,840
Speaker 7: time has changed dramatically. So my questions are, do you

1049
00:56:32,880 --> 00:56:36,560
Speaker 7: biologists normally consider this a species of dog? Could it

1050
00:56:36,640 --> 00:56:39,080
Speaker 7: continue to evolve in the long term and eventually give

1051
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:41,799
Speaker 7: rise to a whole branch of new species. Do we

1052
00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:44,680
Speaker 7: know of other similar cases where evolution happened with a sullen,

1053
00:56:44,719 --> 00:56:48,160
Speaker 7: dramatic change, and it's something like this a word to

1054
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:51,239
Speaker 7: happen a long time ago in the history of a species.

1055
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:51,960
Speaker 7: Would we even know?

1056
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:55,280
Speaker 5: Yeah? Wow, that's a great one.

1057
00:56:55,520 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, very briefly as some background, because I think

1058
00:56:59,040 --> 00:57:03,080
Speaker 2: these transmits tumors are fascinating but also like absolute nightmare fuel.

1059
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that there's a cell in

1060
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:08,800
Speaker 1: the host body that has mutated and it started to

1061
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:13,880
Speaker 1: become cancerous. It's reproducing like crazy, and usually cancer sticks

1062
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:16,440
Speaker 1: with the person who got the cancer. You know, you

1063
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: can't usually pass a liver tumor onto your husband. But

1064
00:57:21,080 --> 00:57:24,400
Speaker 1: in a very few cases, there have been self cells,

1065
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:28,640
Speaker 1: like Tasmanian devil cells that have become cancerous and have

1066
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:31,560
Speaker 1: picked up the ability to jump from one Tasmanian devil

1067
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: to another. And so when Tasmanian devils fight with each other,

1068
00:57:35,160 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 1: they bite. There's a lot of blood that's passed back

1069
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 1: and forth, a lot of saliva that's passed back and forth.

1070
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:41,920
Speaker 1: And I know more about the Tasmanian devil facial tumors

1071
00:57:42,440 --> 00:57:44,840
Speaker 1: than the other example, so I'm sticking there. But anyway,

1072
00:57:44,880 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 1: this tumor is passing between Tasmanian devils, and it's a

1073
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:53,840
Speaker 1: Tasmanian devil cell that now produces tumors on all of

1074
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:55,720
Speaker 1: these other individuals and makes it hard for them to

1075
00:57:55,800 --> 00:57:57,640
Speaker 1: breathe and eat and stuff, and so they die. And

1076
00:57:57,640 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: so I guess the question is these cancer or cells

1077
00:58:01,000 --> 00:58:03,720
Speaker 1: and this is the same thing with CTVT that jump

1078
00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 1: and can now do something totally different than normal dogs do.

1079
00:58:08,080 --> 00:58:11,080
Speaker 2: But it's a dog cell. What yeah, what would you

1080
00:58:11,080 --> 00:58:12,800
Speaker 2: call that was that a different species?

1081
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 5: Well, that's a fun exercise and it certainly illustrates this

1082
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:23,160
Speaker 5: whole important thing about defining a species, right, and how

1083
00:58:23,200 --> 00:58:26,600
Speaker 5: one defines a species then would frame how you would

1084
00:58:26,680 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 5: view CTVT or any of these what I will say

1085
00:58:30,680 --> 00:58:35,080
Speaker 5: are probably you know, rare gray area, exception to the

1086
00:58:35,200 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 5: rule type things. But as long as you follow the definition,

1087
00:58:39,120 --> 00:58:42,080
Speaker 5: you should be able to determine whether this entity, whatever

1088
00:58:42,120 --> 00:58:45,040
Speaker 5: it is, is a species or not. It makes me

1089
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:49,600
Speaker 5: wonder though, because it doesn't have the ability to survive

1090
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:52,920
Speaker 5: and reproduce if it's not in its host. So it

1091
00:58:52,960 --> 00:58:55,920
Speaker 5: seems to fill that same area as like a virus,

1092
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 5: which we have a discussion in our evolution class. You know,

1093
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 5: what is life? How do you define life? And one

1094
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:03,720
Speaker 5: of those you know prerequisits that many of the students

1095
00:59:03,720 --> 00:59:05,560
Speaker 5: come up with is you should be able to reproduce

1096
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 5: on your own. Viruses can't do that, right, They require

1097
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 5: the reproductive machinery of their host to do it. So

1098
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:14,360
Speaker 5: I will not stay one way or at the well

1099
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 5: I think, but I will say that that is an

1100
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:20,560
Speaker 5: interesting example of something that's in that gray area and

1101
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 5: challenges how we define species.

1102
00:59:23,520 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we always We're always doing the best

1103
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 1: that we can. But nature doesn't care that humans would

1104
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,280
Speaker 1: really like to have nice boxes to put things in.

1105
00:59:30,520 --> 00:59:31,280
Speaker 2: And I don't know.

1106
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:33,720
Speaker 1: That's like ninety percent of the fun I think of

1107
00:59:33,720 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 1: being an ecology is trying to figure out what nature

1108
00:59:36,400 --> 00:59:39,200
Speaker 1: did and how what's the best framework for understanding it?

1109
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:41,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think we have the answer at hand.

1110
00:59:41,680 --> 00:59:50,040
Speaker 3: It's clearly dog ish, right, Yes, So, Scott, I want

1111
00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:53,520
Speaker 3: to ask you if we find life on other planets

1112
00:59:54,040 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 3: and we meet alien biologists that are studying their own

1113
00:59:57,560 --> 01:00:00,640
Speaker 3: variety of life, do you think those alien biologists are

1114
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:03,320
Speaker 3: going to have something in analogy to the concept of

1115
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:05,480
Speaker 3: a species that they're going to have your same sort

1116
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:08,560
Speaker 3: of thought experience walking through the park and noticing, like

1117
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:11,360
Speaker 3: trees are different from cats except other alien trees and

1118
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:14,800
Speaker 3: alien cats. Or do you think that this is possibly

1119
01:00:14,840 --> 01:00:16,840
Speaker 3: a function of life on Earth and that life on

1120
01:00:16,920 --> 01:00:19,840
Speaker 3: other planets could be fundamentally different in ways that make

1121
01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:23,160
Speaker 3: the whole concept of a species an earth bound idea.

1122
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:27,640
Speaker 5: That's a wonderful question. I I don't know what they

1123
01:00:27,640 --> 01:00:30,560
Speaker 5: would do. I certainly think you know, if you were to,

1124
01:00:31,600 --> 01:00:34,800
Speaker 5: you know, just forget all the knowledge as biologists that

1125
01:00:34,800 --> 01:00:36,960
Speaker 5: we have accumulated on planet Earth. And if you were

1126
01:00:36,960 --> 01:00:40,959
Speaker 5: to ask us to restart evolutionary biology, yeah, I think

1127
01:00:41,040 --> 01:00:45,440
Speaker 5: we would again come across the definitions of species and

1128
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:49,479
Speaker 5: why they're important for this understanding evolution as a whole

1129
01:00:49,520 --> 01:00:51,920
Speaker 5: and the evolution of biodiversity. So I think if you

1130
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:55,560
Speaker 5: were to replay the the learning of humans and our

1131
01:00:55,680 --> 01:00:59,280
Speaker 5: understanding of planet Earth, I think we would again come

1132
01:00:59,360 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 5: up with species. If we were to go to another

1133
01:01:02,440 --> 01:01:06,400
Speaker 5: planet and ask if some other intelligent life form would

1134
01:01:06,400 --> 01:01:10,040
Speaker 5: define species and find them in the same way we would,

1135
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 5: my answer would probably be yes. I think the first

1136
01:01:14,640 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 5: thing we'd want to know is is what are the

1137
01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:19,680
Speaker 5: relationships between the life on Earth and the life on

1138
01:01:19,680 --> 01:01:23,360
Speaker 5: this other planet? They may share themselves a common ancestor.

1139
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:27,760
Speaker 5: We still don't know exactly where life started on planet Earth,

1140
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 5: and one of the potential hypotheses that I love is panspermia,

1141
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 5: where it actually came from somewhere else and seated life

1142
01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:36,439
Speaker 5: on planet Earth.

1143
01:01:36,480 --> 01:01:38,160
Speaker 3: We're all descended from a tumor on the face of

1144
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:38,880
Speaker 3: an alien dog.

1145
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:43,760
Speaker 5: Oh No, Yes, wouldn't that be beautiful? That would be

1146
01:01:43,800 --> 01:01:47,960
Speaker 5: something Yeah, and even take a step back earlier than

1147
01:01:47,960 --> 01:01:50,840
Speaker 5: that you know, there's all these wonderful experiments exploring how

1148
01:01:50,960 --> 01:01:55,560
Speaker 5: biomolecules may actually form through natural processes right here on

1149
01:01:55,600 --> 01:01:58,680
Speaker 5: planet Earth, and that same process could happen on a

1150
01:01:58,760 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 5: moon around Saturn, or or on another planet in another

1151
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:04,520
Speaker 5: solar system. Those are all possibilities, and so if they

1152
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:09,240
Speaker 5: formed in similar ways, then I also think these discontinuities

1153
01:02:09,280 --> 01:02:12,920
Speaker 5: that evolve seem to be a natural outcome of evolutionary biology.

1154
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 5: And so under all those conditions, I do think an

1155
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:20,680
Speaker 5: alien life form would find species and be excited about

1156
01:02:21,120 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 5: variation and see that. But there is a really big

1157
01:02:26,120 --> 01:02:29,400
Speaker 5: universe and a lot of opportunities there, so I will

1158
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:31,840
Speaker 5: only say that's my guess.

1159
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:34,120
Speaker 3: Well, I hope we get to find alien life and

1160
01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:36,160
Speaker 3: then we get to discover what happens when you put

1161
01:02:36,200 --> 01:02:39,720
Speaker 3: like alien fish and earthfish together in a lake and

1162
01:02:39,760 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 3: then make it too murky for them to make good decisions.

1163
01:02:42,200 --> 01:02:47,320
Speaker 1: Yes, I do too, maybe one day. All right, Thanks

1164
01:02:47,360 --> 01:02:49,160
Speaker 1: so much Scott for being on the show. We hope

1165
01:02:49,200 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 1: to have you back in the future. And this was

1166
01:02:51,000 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 1: a lot of fun.

1167
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:54,680
Speaker 5: Thanks Scott, Yes, fun for me too. Thank y'all.

1168
01:02:54,680 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 4: Thank you for that wonderful interview which highlights the great

1169
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:02,680
Speaker 4: truism of biology. In the case of dogs, it seems

1170
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 4: we adopted the concept of breeds rather than declaring every

1171
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:10,680
Speaker 4: very good boy and girl a different species, since genetically

1172
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:13,680
Speaker 4: there's still close enough for horseshoes as it were. If

1173
01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:17,120
Speaker 4: there's ever an opportunity for extended discussion on the genetics part,

1174
01:03:17,400 --> 01:03:19,840
Speaker 4: I'd be curious to understand what it is or what

1175
01:03:20,080 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 4: selective breeding from humans over the ages is done to

1176
01:03:23,720 --> 01:03:27,880
Speaker 4: allow dogs such a wide variation in appearance, behavior, size

1177
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:31,920
Speaker 4: while remaining reproductively compatible. Or in the vein of Daniel,

1178
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:35,280
Speaker 4: if we discovered an alien planet filled with space Corgi's,

1179
01:03:35,280 --> 01:03:38,920
Speaker 4: poodles and boxers, besides it being a very cuddly place,

1180
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:42,880
Speaker 4: how would astrobiologists classify these extra solar canines?

1181
01:03:43,920 --> 01:03:46,720
Speaker 6: Oh gosh, that went places. I knew it was going

1182
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:51,680
Speaker 6: to be a complex answer, but that was fascinating. Ring species, doggish,

1183
01:03:51,800 --> 01:03:55,880
Speaker 6: nightmare fuel, and an absolutely gorgeous wasp with an amazing name.

1184
01:03:56,960 --> 01:04:00,000
Speaker 6: Next time I walk in the park and admire the discontinuity,

1185
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:03,000
Speaker 6: I'll have a much greater appreciation for all the twists

1186
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:06,040
Speaker 6: and turns of how they got that way. Daniel, please

1187
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:08,840
Speaker 6: pet your baffling dog for me, and thank you so

1188
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,680
Speaker 6: much all of you for a fascinating episode.

1189
01:04:12,160 --> 01:04:17,040
Speaker 7: Thank you for tackling this unusual question. The discussion about

1190
01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:19,720
Speaker 7: the meaning of species was very interesting and all these

1191
01:04:19,880 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 7: educases that stretch the definition that are fascinating, So thanks

1192
01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:25,880
Speaker 7: again Kelly and Daniel and also Scott.

1193
01:04:32,680 --> 01:04:35,080
Speaker 3: Thanks everybody for listening. Please go and do us a

1194
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 3: favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using.

1195
01:04:38,440 --> 01:04:40,040
Speaker 3: It really helps people find us.

1196
01:04:40,560 --> 01:04:44,480
Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing

1197
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:45,240
Speaker 1: Matt Kesselman.

1198
01:04:45,480 --> 01:04:48,720
Speaker 3: He really is a wizard. You can also find us

1199
01:04:48,800 --> 01:04:53,920
Speaker 3: online on Blue Sky, Instagram and x D and K Universe.

1200
01:04:53,960 --> 01:04:55,200
Speaker 3: Come engage with us.

1201
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:58,160
Speaker 1: You can email us at questions at Daniel and Kelly

1202
01:04:58,240 --> 01:04:58,760
Speaker 1: dot org.

1203
01:04:58,880 --> 01:05:01,000
Speaker 9: We really do want to hear from you, and you

1204
01:05:01,040 --> 01:05:05,000
Speaker 9: can find our website www dot danieland Kelly dot org,

1205
01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:08,440
Speaker 9: where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord

1206
01:05:08,520 --> 01:05:11,560
Speaker 9: where everybody comes and talks about the amazing.

1207
01:05:11,240 --> 01:05:15,480
Speaker 1: Universe, and we also have the most amazing moderators. This

1208
01:05:15,920 --> 01:05:18,560
Speaker 1: is an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us.