September 10, 2025 • 55 mins
I answer your amazing questions! From ephemeral pools, to ants who clone other species. And what's up with invasive species, is culling really the answer?
If you have a question you want answered, you can write to me at creaturefeaturepod@gmail.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, it's a listener questions episode.
You send me your questions to Creature Future pod at
gmail dot com, and I do my best to answer them.
These can be questions about animals, about your pets, about wildlife,
(00:31):
about evolution, about the environment, and I will try to
answer all of your questions. So let's get right into
it with our first listener question by Katie. I hope
you had a great summer. I'm a seventh grade science teacher.
This year is part of our ecology unit. I'm planning
on having students focus on ephemeral pools, including raising some
(00:55):
triumphs under various conditions in our classroom. I was wondering
if he'd be willing to do a show on ephemeral
pool organisms, including these adorable, charismatic little guys. I love
the show. Best wishes, Amanda m I Amanda, so I'm
so happy that you're enjoying the show. That's a fantastic
suggestion for an episode that I'm definitely interested in doing.
(01:17):
When I was a kid. I was given some desiccated
try up eggs in one of those little kids, and
I managed to bring I think a couple to life
for a little while, very briefly, but I had no
idea what I was doing. I used tap water, probably
not the right salinity, so they didn't last very long.
(01:40):
And yeah, I think this is an excellent episode suggestion.
I do want to do a full episode on ephemeral pools,
including tryops, but for now I'll just do kind of
a brief overview. First of all, what is a tryup?
What is Amanda talking about? It is a little crustacean.
It looks a lot like a tiny horseshoe crab or
(02:02):
some kind of alien. They have this plate like body
and a segmented tail that forks at the very end
into these two long tips. They're called triops because they
have three eyes. Two are these close together compound eyes
on the top of their head. They're so close together
(02:24):
they're almost like kind of merged into one another, like
Sonic the hedgehog, almost, And then they have a third
eye in between them. And this eye is a simple
eye with a single lens. So triups mature very quickly,
and there are many different species of tryops, but in
(02:44):
general they only live to be around ninety days, so
their eggs, on the other hand, depending on the species,
can remain dried out for years. So let's talk a
little bit about ephemeral pools. It sounds very mystical and magical,
and it is so. Ephemeral pools, also sometimes called vernal
(03:05):
pools or informally potholes, are small seasonal pools of water
that come during wet seasons and tend to dry out cyclically.
So this means that they generally don't house fish, except
that there are some fish like killifish that have specifically
(03:27):
adapted to having really brief, fast live spans and produce
eggs that can survive desiccation, so they can live in
these ephemeral pools. But generally speaking, usually there's a lot
of invertebrate species. You also have some amphibian species. So
what all these species have in common is that they
(03:49):
have to be able to reproduce within the wet season
and produce eggs that can survive the dry season. So
they have to hatch quickly when they are exposed to water,
and they have to mature very quickly and reproduce and
(04:10):
then lay eggs that we'll be able to survive being
dried out. So that's actually why, Like, if you ever
got sea monkeys, which are also known as brin shrimp
more technically or tryops, and you know, you can buy
these kits. You can get them sent to your house.
I know, back in probably I think like the fifties
(04:32):
used to. They used to advertise sea monkeys and magazines
and kids could send in their hard earned cash for
a little packet of sea monkeys and a little plastic
aquarium and maybe or maybe not have them come to life.
Certainly they did not look like the pictures on the packaging,
(04:53):
but they were brine shrimp. And the reason that you
can revive these dried out shelf stable eggs is that
their eggs are very hardy. They survive being dried out.
They go into this sort of like suspended not quite
(05:14):
suspended animation because it's an egg, so it is not
yet fully matured organism, but yeah, it's in a it's
in a state of stasis, so you can keep them
relatively easily, and then once you expose them to water,
hopefully of the right salinity and hardness, then they will
(05:37):
hatch they'll come to life. So other ephemeral pool residents
are amphibians like salamanders, newts, and frogs. So the nice
thing about being an amphibian is you can move around,
so as your pool is drying up, you can maybe
find another pool that isn't as dry. But they it
(05:59):
is also important for them to lay eggs that survive
being dried out. There's some amphibians that will bury themselves
in the mud to survive dry periods as well. So
there are other types of adaptation and ephemeral pools happen
all over the world. So you'll have very different species
(06:20):
depending on where you are, but you can have in
one ecosystem for one kind of ephemeral pool, like hundreds
and hundreds of different species who are taking advantage of
the cycle, the dry wet cycle. So this is really
cool stuff. I definitely want to do a full episode
on this. So thank you so much for the question, Amanda,
(06:43):
and good luck to you and your kids and raising
an army of tryops. I'm very interested. Let me know
how that goes, all right, onto the next listener question.
This one is really really good. In fact, I would
say this is less of a question and more that
someone bringing me some research to my attention and a
(07:08):
very good summary of it. So I'm just gonna read
you the whole email. Hi, Katie, I just happen to
read the most mind blowing scientific paper I've ever come across,
and it's relevant to your interests. It begins with the
statement living organisms are assumed to produce same species offspring
and cites two sources, one of which is the origin
(07:29):
of species. So you know you're in for a wild ride.
A bunch of ant species have queens that lay only
princess eggs when they mate with their own males. To
make workers, they have to mate with males of entirely
different species. The workers are thus all hybrids. And this
isn't even the key finding. Apparently this is just a
(07:52):
thing some ants do, and it has been known for
a while. No, the finding has to do with Mesor Ibericus,
the queens of which have to mate with mesoor structor
to make workers. So these are the main two species
that we're going to be talking about. The problem is
that m Ibericus and M. Structor don't live in the
(08:13):
same place, so m Ibericus queens do some crazy cellular
jewurry brokery to lay eggs that hatch into M. Structor males. Yes,
these are queen ants that lay eggs of an entirely
different species. So when it's time to mate, the queen's
princesses fly off and mate with both m Ibericus and M.
(08:36):
Structor ants from other colonies. Then they do something akin
to indosymbiosis on the M structor sperm. Quick note from me.
Endosymbiosis meaning that you have a symbiote, another organism living
inside you. Symbiosis is a non judgmental term of a
(08:56):
close relationship between two organisms. Can range from mutualism to parasitism,
so in this case it's not necessarily parasitism. Probably closer
to mutualism all right. So back to the email. They
do something it can to endosymbiosis on the M structor sperm,
taking it into the queen's own cells but not merging
(09:18):
its nucleus. The queen can thus regulate fertilization and mitosis.
She can lay diploid pure strain m Ibericus eggs that
hatch into princesses haploid m Ibericus eggs that hatch into
m Ibericus males, So diploid and haploid. Diploid is two
(09:39):
sets of chromosomes, usually coming from the mother and the father.
Haploid is one set, usually in this case coming just
directly from the maternal line. So okay, so all so far,
very normal for ants. They lay diploid female eggs with
(10:05):
genes from both the mother and the father, but then
haploid males with genes usually just from the mother. But
here's where it gets kind of finicky. So so back to
the email. They have haploid instructor eggs. So this is
the other species we were talking about. M. I. Buricus
is the queen, and they're laying haploid instructor eggs that
(10:29):
hatch into instructor males and diploid hybrid eggs that hatch
into workers. So these ants can both create basically male
clones of another species as well as the hybrid workers.
All right, back to the email. This is amazing, right.
(10:51):
The authors bring up some important points in the discussion section.
The sexual behavior of these ants means we really need
to rethink the whole concept of speed. She's because kate
nature cares not what boxes we put things into. They
also describe such interspecies mating and ants as a form
of sperm parasitism, but it's ambiguous which is the parasite
(11:12):
and which is the host. One way to look at
it is that M. I. Buricus is just using instructor's
sperm to make more in my Burcus, not letting their
captive instructors mate with princesses of their own species. But
from a selfish gene perspective, one could say that mstructor
is piggybacking off the hard work of M. My bu
because using a whole other ant species to perpetrate the M.
(11:34):
Structor genome nature sure is wild and confusing. I guess
I should ask a question, shouldn't I? Is this the
wildest form of reproduction we know? Or do other species
get even crazier? Are there any other animals that laugh
in the face of our attempts to define the species?
Keeping great Chris, M Hi, Chris, so amazing email, great,
(11:55):
great detail, an amazing study that you bring out. So
I read the paper you sent me. The paper is
called one mother for two species via obligate cross species
cloning in ants. So your summary, Chris is perfect. I
just want to reiterate stuff because like, there's a lot
of a lot of things going on. These queens of
(12:15):
the m Ibericus ants are producing a lot of different offspring.
So this incredible species of ant Mesor Ibericus was found
to use the sperm of a different species, mesr structor.
So the m Ibericus queens are able to use the
DNA of their own species to produce both male and
(12:38):
female offsprings, but they cannot produce workers. So their free
male offsprings are future queens and the male offsprings are
their own species and used for mating for producing more
future queens. Ah. But they need the inmstructor DNA this
(12:58):
other species DNA to produce workers. But they don't only
use it to produce workers. They use this DNA to
produce clones of males from this other species, haploid males
that are only getting their DNA from the instructor DNA,
(13:20):
as well as hybrid females that have both m Ibericus
DNA and in instructor DNA, and those hybrid workers are
essential to the functioning of the colony. So the ability
of the m Ibericus ant to produce workers has become
entirely dependent on instructor DNA. The researchers found that worker
(13:45):
hybrids primarily had the DNA of cloned instructors, although some
were wild types. So it means that sometimes the queens
had directly mated with instructors they found in the wild
and produced produced workers from these matings. But a lot
of these workers are entirely produced by clones of this
(14:09):
other species. So the queen kind of becomes like a
clone factory where she's producing clones of this other species
that are then used to meete with to produce hybrid workers. Meanwhile,
she's still doing normal ant things where she's producing future
queens as well as males of her own species. So
(14:33):
the high amount of workers who are fathered by clones
means that, very uniquely among ant species in my Bericus,
queens create a steady supply of clones. You know, like
in Man. I didn't watch all the prequels to Star Wars,
but you know in Star Wars they make a bunch
of a clone army. It's what these queens are doing,
and then they use these clones to father worker ants.
(15:00):
And the study authors liken this to domestication. Definitely very strange,
very very weird dynamics going on. I think this study
is really really cool Chris, As you pointed out, the
concept of species is more of an art than a
rule in nature. The most simple definition of a species
(15:22):
is the biggest category of organism in which the individuals
can mate and produce fertile offspring. This definition is definitely lacking.
What about asexual organisms? Right, So you could say, like, ah,
but so then a species also includes those that individuals
can asexually reproduce. But again, this definition isn'tcomplete given that
(15:46):
hybrids exist, and while most hybrids like mules, are not fertile,
you can sometimes have hybrid species that are fertile. So
often biologists use other markers, either DNA, morphological differences, evolutionary
(16:08):
history to help refine the definition of species. So like
in this case of these ants, these two species diverged
a really long time ago, millions of years ago, and
then it seems like this symbiotic relationship developed after they
had diverged. So that's kind of why they would say
(16:33):
these are different species, even if they're incorporating these other
ants regularly into their mating. But it's definitely a fuzzy category.
There's a lot of gray area, just as there is
for most things in biology. But yeah, of course, there's
so much debate when it comes to species, particularly differentiating
(16:58):
between species and subspecies. There are a whole like species
complexes where you have things often things like butterflies or frogs,
where you have a huge diversity of species, and then
some of them are morphologically genetically extremely similar and can
(17:20):
even potentially mate with each other, but they have a
few differences. So the question is, at one point are
they a different species who can just kind of mate
with each other and produce fertile offspring, and at what
point are they different. It's very hard. It's very hard
to kind of make these categories. There's much a lot
(17:44):
of thought that goes into it that I don't I
don't quite understand. I'm certainly not the authority on what
exactly counts as a species. As for Chris's other question
about whether this is the wildest form of reproduction we know,
I'd say it's really subjective. To me. This study is
(18:06):
really really cool. It's very exciting that you have an
ant species that is basically producing clones of another species
that they're using as a farm for genetic material to
create worker ants. That's incredible. But there's so many examples
(18:26):
of really weird life cycles, super super strange, lots of
cases of sexual and asexual reproduction, assisted reproduction from like
other species, sexual parasites, that all get pretty freaky. I
would say, I think that the what is strangest is
(18:50):
going to be subjective. But I'll offer up an example
of an extremely strange form of reproduction. So I cannot
recall if I've talked about this on the show show before,
but this is the Adactylidium, which is a microscopic arthropod
whose entire life cycle is extremely messed up. So these
(19:12):
are mites. These are teeny teeny teeny tiny mites. Their
microscopic you really can't see them barely at all, I
doubt with the naked eye. So let's start with the
pregnant female. She has up to eight embryos inside her,
all female, and then she has one male embryo. These
(19:36):
develop into reproductively mature mites inside of her, and the
male mates with all the sister females fertilizing them, So
all of this is already happening inside the pregnant female.
Then the offspring eat their way outside of their own mother,
(19:59):
who's only a few days old herself, which kills which
kills her. So this is not the only form of
matrophagi in the animal kingdom. There are other animals that
will eat their own mothers, but this is certainly, I think,
the only case where you have already pregnant females inside
(20:20):
the mother then eating their way outside. You think this
sounds really unfair for the females. The males don't have
much of a life either. After impregnating all of his
sisters inside his own mother, he has no further purpose.
(20:40):
Even if he gets outside of the mother with the sisters,
he doesn't have any instinct to feed or to mate.
He just patiently waits for death to come. The females, meanwhile,
will find a thrip EGGA thrip is another teeny tiny
art pod, So they find an egg of this other
(21:03):
species to feed on, and they are already pregnant because
they were fertilized while they were still inside the mother.
So they feed on an egg and after a few
days the same thing happens to them. So it's a
pretty thankless existence for these mites. Life is an endless
(21:25):
genetic production line and little else. Thankfully, their microscopic they
do not have many brain cells around, not much neural like,
they do have neural cells, but it's not I wouldn't
feel too much existential horror on their behalf because probably
(21:48):
they're not super aware of what's going on. So really
it's us who get to ponder the existential ramifications of
the existence of these Adactylidium mites. So there you go.
I don't know. I wouldn't say it's cooler than the
(22:09):
ant study. I think producing an army of clones of
another species that you harvest their DNA from for your
own workers is also pretty messed up. Nature's very, very
creatively messed up. There's lots of examples. Here's just another one.
Hope you enjoyed that, all right, So we'll take a
real quick break and then get back with another listener question.
(22:36):
So here's another listener question. Hi Katie, longtime listener, first
time questioner. Could you discuss the management of invasive species
and non native species? I find myself torn due to
my love for animals. I understand that invasive species can
negatively impact or even devastate native species, but I have
(22:56):
a hard time with calling them. I suppose it just
upsets me that animals have to suffer due to human errors.
I know that invasive species have to be managed in
some way, but what goes into the decisions on how
to manage them? Who typically has the say and how
they're managed? Are the management strategies usually successful? What happens
(23:17):
when a species is not native but also not harmful?
Would they just be left alone? Are there examples of
non native species being beneficial? Interested in any information about this? Really,
I'd love to know your thoughts so I can understand
it all a bit better. Thank you, Ashley from Kalamazoo. Hi, Ashley,
So this is a great question, and I totally get
(23:38):
where you're coming from. Invasive species aren't evil. It's not
their fault. They usually had no real say and where
they ended up, and they're just trying to survive. Controlling
them is usually very important in protecting ecosystems. But what
about when they simply adapt to their new home without
(23:59):
wreaking havoc? That's a great question. So we know that
certain species like cane toads, cats, black rats, zebra muscles,
longhorn beetles, these are all examples of animals that are
invasive that can be incredibly dangerous to native species. You'll
(24:20):
notice that I mentioned cats I'm talking about the same
type of kiddies that we have as pets. Feral cats
can indeed be considered invasive where they freely roam, breed,
and kill native species, particularly birds. Usually, though we're less
comfortable hunting and killing cats because we love them. They're pets,
(24:45):
so controlling them usually involves spaying and neutering campaigns, though
we do also sometimes trap them and euthanize them. That
does certainly happen either way. I think people are more
squeamish about being the idea of colling feral cats, right
even though we do to a certain extent do it,
(25:05):
although we do it humanely with euthanasia. Yeah, rightfully, So,
we were uncomfortable with the idea of calling these feral
pets that we're the ones who introduced them, and we
also kind of have a more personal relationship with them,
so we understand we frankly like see them more as
(25:28):
an animal with emotions, even though there's plenty of invasive
species that we call that are similarly you know, animals
that have feelings, right, So, like it's just it's kind
of a matter of perspective. Because these are pets, we
empathize with them more even though there's plenty of perfectly complicated,
(25:51):
intelligent animals who are also invasive species. So unfortunately, like
doing a lot of spain and neutering or trapping in,
euthanasia isn't always an option. Uh So, for instance, on islands,
(26:12):
rats can be really really dangerous. So rats are extremely fertile,
they produce a lot of offspring, and so in some places,
if they are not controlled quickly, they can very effectively
wipe out native island populations, and so usually conservationists will
use lethal methods in these in these cases, like using poisons,
(26:37):
which I think is it's sad, right, Like, I think
rats are intelligent little animals. Some people keep them as pets.
I'm sure people who own rats as pets will kind
of really sympathize with this, right because you see, like, yeah,
they they they're they they have they they have a brain,
they have a mind. You know, they're they're simple creature.
(27:00):
But they that doesn't mean that they don't have emotions
and they don't have a level of social intelligence. So
the control of rats is I think always for me
at least, been kind of an uncomfortable an uncomfortable thing
to reckon with, right because in terms of protecting ecosystems
(27:21):
and also protecting human health, controlling rats is pretty important.
But on the other hand, you know, poisoning them rat
poison has a lot of problems, one being that it
is not necessarily very humane way of killing an animal, right,
(27:43):
And then the other is that if you do have
rat populations where they're also predators, you can cause ecological
damage if the predators are eating rats who have been poisoned.
So I really only think in cases where you are
very time constrained, right where rats could easily overtake, say
(28:05):
like an island with a lot of vulnerable bird species,
and you have to control their population really quickly. I
do see why conservations and will sometimes use this, but yeah,
it's certainly not ideal, but at this point, right, logistically,
sometimes it's what has to be done. But that doesn't
mean that humane options are always inconvenient or more expensive.
(28:30):
In fact, I'll bet that at some point more humane
methods will become like the standard. So there are some
wildlife advocates who point out that hunting right, like one
method of colling, is really ineffective. At this point, right,
we don't have there's just not enough people who need
(28:52):
sustenance from huntings that are going out and say like
colling wild boar populations, So it's it's expensive then to
like actually set about trying to purposefully coal and hunt
wild boar. So, uh, there's got to be a more
(29:15):
effective and also more humane option for being able to
control their populations because wild boar can be very destructive
to their ecosystem. And that's also an example of an
animal who I think is intelligent. I'm not against hunting them, right, Like,
I think that that's certainly in a lot of ways
(29:37):
no more if less inhumane than factory farming. But if
you have to cull a bunch of wild bore, right,
that's just more you're and it's not for using their meat, right,
it's just because they are an invasive pest. It's not
a great situation. And I think it would be really
(30:00):
good if we came up with more humane options, and
we are so. Researchers and a college's conservationists are coming
up with more humane methods of controlling populations, and they've
already tried this on gray squirrels. So in the UK,
conservationists are trying to control the gray squirrel population, which
(30:22):
is an invasive species from North America. So you know,
there you go, Britz, you got you got a lot
of our movies, but you also get our terrible squirrels.
So these squirrels are really not a benign invasive species.
They may be cute, but they're devastating the native red
squirrel population in the UK as well as other species
(30:46):
as well as vegetation, so they're not They're not great
in terms of their presence in the UK. Not the
squirrel's fault, but they're there and they're causing problems. So
controlling the squirrel population with hunting not very effective. Poisoning
them not very humane. But also if you have wild species,
(31:11):
like say foxes that are native to the region hunting
squirrels and they get a squirrel that's been poisoned, that's
not good for the fox. So it's like there's not
a great solution there. So what they're coming up with
is oral contraceptives. So this is not a completely new idea.
(31:32):
The idea of basically baiting animals with contraceptives so they
are rendered infertile has been used in a lot of
different cases to try to control populations. It's even on
the genetic level, for mosquito control, creating genetically modified males
that are infertile to reduce the mosquito population. But this
(31:55):
is something that is I think being put into practice
more so for these gray squirrels. What they'll do is
they will lace this hazel nut spread that apparently the
squirrels really love with an oral contraceptive. They put it
(32:15):
in bait boxes that are specifically designed to be accessible
mainly by the gray squirrels. They try to make it
specific so it's really only the gray squirrels getting at
it rather other than a different species or you know,
a different type of animal that they don't want getting
to this contraceptive. So then the squirrels go and eat
(32:38):
the hazel nuts and instead of being killed and poisoned,
they are rendered infertile. This trick would definitely work on me,
by the way, I love hazel nuts. Hazel nuts spread
in a box that's free, Yes, please glad it's not poison.
But yeah. So this is a potentially very effective way
(33:03):
of controlling their population that is already being used in
some instances, and I think probably especially as we if
we put more research into it, and we're able to
maybe even like create contraceptives that are really specific to
a species of animals, So even if another animal eats it,
(33:24):
they're not going to become infertile. Only the targeted animal will.
I think that we could really have very humane ways
of controlling invasive species that are really efficient and you know,
in the long run, if you invest in the short term,
(33:45):
in the long run much more cost effective. So I
don't think that being humane about it is at odds
with efficiency with cost effectiveness, and so I definitely see
this as hopefully being the future of controlling invasive species populations.
(34:09):
All right, So let's talk just some of your other
questions because those are also really interesting. So, like you mentioned,
who basically gets to say and how invasive species are managed.
That's a very complicated issue because it's going to differ
depending on your country, your locality. Even when you look
at one country, the management of it is going to
(34:33):
depend on the administration. So for an example, in the US,
there are a few federal agencies who are involved in
controlling invasive species. Generally speaking, this as part of the
National Invasive Species Council within the US Department of the Interior.
It's a it's a bunch of it's like kind of
(34:53):
a group of people from various federal agencies who oversees
what to do about invasive species, monitoring them and then
actions taken. In twenty nineteen, during Trump's first administration, he
effectively disbanded the National Invasive Species Council by defunding it.
(35:20):
So for a while it was kind of disbanded, and
then under Biden it was reinstated. Currently, I have not seen.
I mean, there's so much news that's constantly happening, so
it's pretty hard to keep up with everything that's going on.
But I don't think it's been officially disbanded. I imagine
(35:44):
it's definitely been affected by government budget cuts, right, So
I don't know if it is as functional as it was.
I think it still exists, but yeah, the cuts to
funding for a lot of these programs, I would imagine
(36:04):
also has an impact on the National Invasive Species Council.
So I my point in bringing all this up is
that invasive species are typically managed by government agencies, but
those are subject to the policies put in place by leaders.
(36:27):
So it's a very it's a it's a pretty complicated
political question that you bring up, like who is actually
monitoring this, who is managing it, who decides what to do.
And again it can also just depend locally, right, you
may have uh, state agencies or city agencies who have
(36:49):
their own their own like monitoring species monitoring, and so
they might come to separate decision. And so let's address
your question of like, are there invasive species who are
beneficial or benign? I looked into this, I think that
(37:13):
there usually uh, it's it kind of depends on what
you how you define a benefit, right and who who
is benefiting. So, because you could argue that say, like
the European honeybee in the US is beneficial to humans
(37:34):
because we get honey from them, right, It's a big
agricultural industry of honey, and certainly we enjoy having honey.
There's a lot of crops and so on that are
that we grow intentionally, and so in terms of beneficial
there are certainly arguments to be made that certain invasive species,
(37:58):
right of crops and animals benefit human beings. Now, in
terms of the environment, I think it's a little harder
to make the case for invasive species being beneficial for
the local habitat. I think often there may be some
(38:21):
there can be some trade offs, right, Like it can
benefit certain species, especially. I'm going to talk mostly about
plants here because it's usually the ones that are more benign.
Are plants not always the case. There can be some
really nasty plants that choke out local plants, So plants
are not Just because it's an invasive plant does not
(38:42):
mean that it's going to be benign, But a lot
of the benign species happen to be plants. And you know,
I think it's like, in some cases, an invasive plant
may benefit y some of the wildlife there, right, Like
(39:02):
you maybe have honeysuckle or something that benefits certain birds
in the area, but then the downside is that that
might outcompete some other kind of plant, right, So saying
it benefits it's a little tricky because, like there's certainly
(39:23):
invasive species that do not cause the collapse of a
local ecosystem. Saying it's beneficial to the local ecosystem is
usually a little more granular, where it might benefit some
species and actually be a detriment to other species, and
so making a determination of it overall, like improving an
(39:48):
ecosystem is usually a little bit more complex. But in
terms of there are some cases where an invasive species
is much less harmful then we fear when it first
arrives on the scene. And an example of this is
the spotted lantern fly. If you live on the east
(40:10):
coast of the US, you've probably you're probably pretty familiar
with this. It's a black and red spotted flying insect.
It's actually a species of plant hopper. It's invasive. It's
from South Korea. Initially, conservations were very concerned that it
(40:30):
would kill a lot of local hardwood trees because plant
hoppers are they there. Their big thing is they go
onto plants and they suck out the juices, and so
researchers were rightfully, in my opinion, very concerned that these
could have a really negative impact on trees, given that
(40:53):
in their native homes they will attack trees, and these
trees that we have in the eastern US did not
co evolve with spotted lantern flies, so they don't have
the same defenses as trees in their native environments. So,
(41:16):
you know, environmental experts were quite concerned and there was
a lot you probably heard a lot of news about
like you're supposed to kill them on site, and these
are going to be a menace Fortunately, at least as
far as the research has shown so far, they're not
as destructive as they originally had feared. I'm going to
(41:39):
make a distinction of like, this does not mean they're good.
They're not good or even benign. But they're not killing
off the trees in the way that initially had been feared.
That doesn't mean that the conservationists the experts were wrong
(42:00):
to sound the alarm. I think it's much better to
approach an invasive species with a lot of caution, try
to nip it in the bud if you can. Obviously
we weren't able to stop there from being this invasion,
but you know, I think the caution was definitely warranted.
(42:21):
But it's simply the nature of science and research that
you when something novel happens, right like an invasive species
comes to an ecosystem. You can guess about certain things
that might happen, but you can't know until you get
the data. And once you get the data, you revise
your understanding of the situation. In this case, local hardwood
(42:45):
tree populations where these spotted lantern flies have been around
I have not been dying off as was feared. That
doesn't mean the lantern flies are benign, they still damage
the trees. The trees are able to withstand the damage
a lot better than what had initially been feared. You
(43:08):
still have the problem of these things damaging trees, right, So,
like if a tree is stressed from a lantern fly,
can imagine if say there's another invasive species, or say
there's a fungus or disease that attacks these trees, you
could in the future still see some kind of really
serious consequence to the invasive spotted lantern fly. So I
(43:32):
wouldn't say that this is enough to say like, ah,
we don't really need to control their population because they're
not killing trees as had been feared. The fact that
they injure and stress the trees is already not great,
and it could be you know, there are it could
be one factor that in the future, in some kind
of event where the trees are put under some other
(43:55):
kind of stress, that could be really devastating. So uh,
it is. It's of course new information and data that
I don't think should be ignored, but it doesn't necessarily
change the calculus that spotted lantern flies still are not
necessarily a benign invasive species. Now this is an interesting thing,
(44:19):
and people were instructed to kill these on site, and
I think still are so. As an individual killing lantern flies,
or even as like a collective of everyone when they
see one, killing one is probably not going to do
(44:42):
a whole lot to the lantern fly population. There's just
too many of them, and just by stomping the ones
you see is not gonna probably make much of a
dent in the lantern fly population. I mean, if this
were the case, we would since we all, I would imagine,
try to kill as many mosquitoes as we can that
(45:04):
would somehow have an effect on the mosquito population, and
it just does not really have a significant effect. So
certainly lantern flies may not be quite as numerous as mosquitoes,
but still they have a healthy population. So killing them
on site, given their ficundity meaning they have a lot
(45:25):
of offspring and their numbers, is not probably going to
really do much of a dent to their numbers. The
reason that experts were saying to kill them when you
see them, the reason that was the instruction was the
(45:47):
more serious potential problem is that a lantern fly could
hitchhike with a human and go somewhere else like into
another region where they're not they have not taken hold,
so like for instance, getting in your car, getting on
your clothes, in some of your property, that's you know,
(46:09):
moving as humans, we like to move around the country.
And then if that happens and you have a hitchhiker
and then they start to invade a new region in
the US, that could be quite consequential. So the killing
them on site is more of a way to prevent
(46:30):
them from Like when you encounter one and it's near
you and you kill it, that reduces the chance that
you're going to have a hitchhiker lantern fly that you
bring with you to another region in the US. I think, honestly,
like I know that public sort of communication, science communication,
(46:53):
public health communication, all these things are really complicated. I
always think that it's better to explain everything to people.
Maybe you can do the simple flyer of like kill
these guys on site because they're invasive, but having some
explanation as to the why. Right, these aren't going to
be dangerous to human beings, They're not going to bite you,
(47:16):
and you're not necessarily on a crusade to stomp out
the lantern flies. Maybe like at the very beginning it
might make a difference. Honestly, I'm pretty doubtful that as well.
I think that there's only a few cases in organisms
that don't reproduce as quickly, like the giant Asian hornets.
(47:39):
We were able to control their population before they got
a foothold, but they're just not as they don't lay
as many eggs. They don't they don't have the ability
to reproduce that lantern flies have. So anyways, so that's
why you are instructed to kill them on site. It
(48:00):
is to prevent you from having them as a hitchhiker.
So if you're not planning at all to move outside
of your you live on the eastern coast of the US,
and you're not traveling anywhere, and you just see one
in your backyard and you don't really feel like killing it,
you're not doing anything wrong. It is pretty much exclusively
(48:21):
the purpose is, like, you know, it gets in your car,
on your stuff, and then you travel somewhere. So yeah,
it's I think that it is. Really there's a lot
of nuance and to this phenomenon of invasive species. I
(48:41):
think it's tricky communicating with the public about it because
usually the efforts are focused on trying to prevent the
most serious harms that could happen due to invasive species,
which might leave little room for subtlety in public messaging.
Right Like you're saying, like, look, lantern flies are a
really cool animal and cool insect and plant hoppers are
(49:04):
amazing and interesting, but also like, you know, kill them.
You know, it's a complicated thing, right, So I do
think that we can both control invasive species understand the
harms that they cause, while also appreciating life, right Like,
(49:26):
I kind of sometimes feel like I get where I've
had this question a few times, and I get where
you're coming from. This discomfort of sometimes it feels like
when there's an invasive species and sort of an effort
to call them, it gives people this like almost permission
maybe to feel like, I don't know, like there is
(49:50):
like an evil enemy to destroy, right, sort of like
in Starship Troopers, right like, Ah, these are insects that
we can destroy and stamp out and with a relish,
And I don't necessarily think it's like really really bad,
right Like, I don't think it's you know, like wanting
to stomp on an invasive insect makes you a bad person.
(50:14):
But I think in general, uh, the kind of like
the way that we view invasive species as almost like malicious, right, Yeah,
I think that that is a little odd, right, it's
ascribing a moral system to them that these insects they
haven't they they didn't decide to accidentally fly over to
(50:40):
the US and some ship shipment of goods, so you know,
to kind of like have this this idea of them
as being evil invaders is certainly not the case. And
I think like the way that the best way really.
I think obviously we can just ignore invasive species because
(51:02):
they can be really devastating. And also I really don't
think it's wrong for conservationists and in collegists to be
very cautious at the beginning of noticing that their invasive
species around, right, So like if they have a really
strong primary response to it, right, and then it turns
out that it's not as devastating as they had feared
(51:22):
it would be, it's not because they're stupid, it's not
because they made some kind of mistake. It's that it's
a huge question because like we simply may not know
what exactly the consequences will be of an invasive species.
It could be a little bad but not super bad,
or could be something like cane toads that are just
this really really insidious force of kind of the worst
(51:50):
type of invasive species that really destroys things, are really hearty,
really tough to get rid of. Again, the cane toads
don't know what they're doing. They're not evil, they have
no intention of driving other animals to extinction. They're innocent
in this situation, but they are really devastating, And so
(52:12):
it makes sense, I think, to have this really strong
response to invasive species. But I think that like having
a full understanding of the situation, being really open to
new information and data as it comes in, which means
funding researchers. Like the more funding that we put into research,
(52:32):
not just in monitoring, but also new techniques of controlling,
like the what I mentioned with the gray squirrels contraceptives.
That's going to be the kind of thing that I
think not only will make this more humane and will
prove our understanding of invasive species, but I think ultimately
(52:54):
is going to be more effective than a lot of
the methods that we currently use. Right So, I I
do not think ecologists conservationists are are in the wrong
on this at all. I think, if anything, we need
to be putting more funding into it so that we
can refine the tools that we use in controlling invasive species,
(53:16):
and I think those do those will become more humane.
The high the more technologically advanced that we become, the
more humane in this case, I think things will be.
So yeah, I think I don't think it's incompatible the
respect for life, but also the understanding of how to
(53:38):
control invasive species and just for goodness sakes, we have
to research it. It's really important. So thanks you guys
so much for listening. I will answer the guests who
squawking Animal sound guessing game next week. Until then, please
do send me your questions at Creature Future podu at
(53:58):
gmail dot com. I really enjoy answering these questions, and
also if you guys point out cool researcher stories, always welcome.
I learn a lot from these emails too, so I
really appreciate that. Thanks to you guys so much for listening,
(54:19):
and thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome
song Exo Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio,
app Apple podcasts or hey, guess what where have you
listened to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I
can't tell you what to do. I don't even feel
confident in telling you whether or not you should kill
(54:41):
spotted lantern flies. But don't let them hitchhike with you,
all Right, If you see a spotted lantern fly and
it's sticking out, it's a little proboscis and sort of
a hitchhiking gesture. Ignore them, leave them alone, don't let
them in your car, don't bring them down to another
US state. It's it's not going to be a good situation.
(55:02):
See you next Wednesday. Mm hmm
Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, it's a listener questions episode.
You send me your questions to Creature Future pod at
gmail dot com, and I do my best to answer them.
These can be questions about animals, about your pets, about wildlife,
(00:31):
about evolution, about the environment, and I will try to
answer all of your questions. So let's get right into
it with our first listener question by Katie. I hope
you had a great summer. I'm a seventh grade science teacher.
This year is part of our ecology unit. I'm planning
on having students focus on ephemeral pools, including raising some
(00:55):
triumphs under various conditions in our classroom. I was wondering
if he'd be willing to do a show on ephemeral
pool organisms, including these adorable, charismatic little guys. I love
the show. Best wishes, Amanda m I Amanda, so I'm
so happy that you're enjoying the show. That's a fantastic
suggestion for an episode that I'm definitely interested in doing.
(01:17):
When I was a kid. I was given some desiccated
try up eggs in one of those little kids, and
I managed to bring I think a couple to life
for a little while, very briefly, but I had no
idea what I was doing. I used tap water, probably
not the right salinity, so they didn't last very long.
(01:40):
And yeah, I think this is an excellent episode suggestion.
I do want to do a full episode on ephemeral pools,
including tryops, but for now I'll just do kind of
a brief overview. First of all, what is a tryup?
What is Amanda talking about? It is a little crustacean.
It looks a lot like a tiny horseshoe crab or
(02:02):
some kind of alien. They have this plate like body
and a segmented tail that forks at the very end
into these two long tips. They're called triops because they
have three eyes. Two are these close together compound eyes
on the top of their head. They're so close together
(02:24):
they're almost like kind of merged into one another, like
Sonic the hedgehog, almost, And then they have a third
eye in between them. And this eye is a simple
eye with a single lens. So triups mature very quickly,
and there are many different species of tryops, but in
(02:44):
general they only live to be around ninety days, so
their eggs, on the other hand, depending on the species,
can remain dried out for years. So let's talk a
little bit about ephemeral pools. It sounds very mystical and magical,
and it is so. Ephemeral pools, also sometimes called vernal
(03:05):
pools or informally potholes, are small seasonal pools of water
that come during wet seasons and tend to dry out cyclically.
So this means that they generally don't house fish, except
that there are some fish like killifish that have specifically
(03:27):
adapted to having really brief, fast live spans and produce
eggs that can survive desiccation, so they can live in
these ephemeral pools. But generally speaking, usually there's a lot
of invertebrate species. You also have some amphibian species. So
what all these species have in common is that they
(03:49):
have to be able to reproduce within the wet season
and produce eggs that can survive the dry season. So
they have to hatch quickly when they are exposed to water,
and they have to mature very quickly and reproduce and
(04:10):
then lay eggs that we'll be able to survive being
dried out. So that's actually why, Like, if you ever
got sea monkeys, which are also known as brin shrimp
more technically or tryops, and you know, you can buy
these kits. You can get them sent to your house.
I know, back in probably I think like the fifties
(04:32):
used to. They used to advertise sea monkeys and magazines
and kids could send in their hard earned cash for
a little packet of sea monkeys and a little plastic
aquarium and maybe or maybe not have them come to life.
Certainly they did not look like the pictures on the packaging,
(04:53):
but they were brine shrimp. And the reason that you
can revive these dried out shelf stable eggs is that
their eggs are very hardy. They survive being dried out.
They go into this sort of like suspended not quite
(05:14):
suspended animation because it's an egg, so it is not
yet fully matured organism, but yeah, it's in a it's
in a state of stasis, so you can keep them
relatively easily, and then once you expose them to water,
hopefully of the right salinity and hardness, then they will
(05:37):
hatch they'll come to life. So other ephemeral pool residents
are amphibians like salamanders, newts, and frogs. So the nice
thing about being an amphibian is you can move around,
so as your pool is drying up, you can maybe
find another pool that isn't as dry. But they it
(05:59):
is also important for them to lay eggs that survive
being dried out. There's some amphibians that will bury themselves
in the mud to survive dry periods as well. So
there are other types of adaptation and ephemeral pools happen
all over the world. So you'll have very different species
(06:20):
depending on where you are, but you can have in
one ecosystem for one kind of ephemeral pool, like hundreds
and hundreds of different species who are taking advantage of
the cycle, the dry wet cycle. So this is really
cool stuff. I definitely want to do a full episode
on this. So thank you so much for the question, Amanda,
(06:43):
and good luck to you and your kids and raising
an army of tryops. I'm very interested. Let me know
how that goes, all right, onto the next listener question.
This one is really really good. In fact, I would
say this is less of a question and more that
someone bringing me some research to my attention and a
(07:08):
very good summary of it. So I'm just gonna read
you the whole email. Hi, Katie, I just happen to
read the most mind blowing scientific paper I've ever come across,
and it's relevant to your interests. It begins with the
statement living organisms are assumed to produce same species offspring
and cites two sources, one of which is the origin
(07:29):
of species. So you know you're in for a wild ride.
A bunch of ant species have queens that lay only
princess eggs when they mate with their own males. To
make workers, they have to mate with males of entirely
different species. The workers are thus all hybrids. And this
isn't even the key finding. Apparently this is just a
(07:52):
thing some ants do, and it has been known for
a while. No, the finding has to do with Mesor Ibericus,
the queens of which have to mate with mesoor structor
to make workers. So these are the main two species
that we're going to be talking about. The problem is
that m Ibericus and M. Structor don't live in the
(08:13):
same place, so m Ibericus queens do some crazy cellular
jewurry brokery to lay eggs that hatch into M. Structor males. Yes,
these are queen ants that lay eggs of an entirely
different species. So when it's time to mate, the queen's
princesses fly off and mate with both m Ibericus and M.
(08:36):
Structor ants from other colonies. Then they do something akin
to indosymbiosis on the M structor sperm. Quick note from me.
Endosymbiosis meaning that you have a symbiote, another organism living
inside you. Symbiosis is a non judgmental term of a
(08:56):
close relationship between two organisms. Can range from mutualism to parasitism,
so in this case it's not necessarily parasitism. Probably closer
to mutualism all right. So back to the email. They
do something it can to endosymbiosis on the M structor sperm,
taking it into the queen's own cells but not merging
(09:18):
its nucleus. The queen can thus regulate fertilization and mitosis.
She can lay diploid pure strain m Ibericus eggs that
hatch into princesses haploid m Ibericus eggs that hatch into
m Ibericus males, So diploid and haploid. Diploid is two
(09:39):
sets of chromosomes, usually coming from the mother and the father.
Haploid is one set, usually in this case coming just
directly from the maternal line. So okay, so all so far,
very normal for ants. They lay diploid female eggs with
(10:05):
genes from both the mother and the father, but then
haploid males with genes usually just from the mother. But
here's where it gets kind of finicky. So so back to
the email. They have haploid instructor eggs. So this is
the other species we were talking about. M. I. Buricus
is the queen, and they're laying haploid instructor eggs that
(10:29):
hatch into instructor males and diploid hybrid eggs that hatch
into workers. So these ants can both create basically male
clones of another species as well as the hybrid workers.
All right, back to the email. This is amazing, right.
(10:51):
The authors bring up some important points in the discussion section.
The sexual behavior of these ants means we really need
to rethink the whole concept of speed. She's because kate
nature cares not what boxes we put things into. They
also describe such interspecies mating and ants as a form
of sperm parasitism, but it's ambiguous which is the parasite
(11:12):
and which is the host. One way to look at
it is that M. I. Buricus is just using instructor's
sperm to make more in my Burcus, not letting their
captive instructors mate with princesses of their own species. But
from a selfish gene perspective, one could say that mstructor
is piggybacking off the hard work of M. My bu
because using a whole other ant species to perpetrate the M.
(11:34):
Structor genome nature sure is wild and confusing. I guess
I should ask a question, shouldn't I? Is this the
wildest form of reproduction we know? Or do other species
get even crazier? Are there any other animals that laugh
in the face of our attempts to define the species?
Keeping great Chris, M Hi, Chris, so amazing email, great,
(11:55):
great detail, an amazing study that you bring out. So
I read the paper you sent me. The paper is
called one mother for two species via obligate cross species
cloning in ants. So your summary, Chris is perfect. I
just want to reiterate stuff because like, there's a lot
of a lot of things going on. These queens of
(12:15):
the m Ibericus ants are producing a lot of different offspring.
So this incredible species of ant Mesor Ibericus was found
to use the sperm of a different species, mesr structor.
So the m Ibericus queens are able to use the
DNA of their own species to produce both male and
(12:38):
female offsprings, but they cannot produce workers. So their free
male offsprings are future queens and the male offsprings are
their own species and used for mating for producing more
future queens. Ah. But they need the inmstructor DNA this
(12:58):
other species DNA to produce workers. But they don't only
use it to produce workers. They use this DNA to
produce clones of males from this other species, haploid males
that are only getting their DNA from the instructor DNA,
(13:20):
as well as hybrid females that have both m Ibericus
DNA and in instructor DNA, and those hybrid workers are
essential to the functioning of the colony. So the ability
of the m Ibericus ant to produce workers has become
entirely dependent on instructor DNA. The researchers found that worker
(13:45):
hybrids primarily had the DNA of cloned instructors, although some
were wild types. So it means that sometimes the queens
had directly mated with instructors they found in the wild
and produced produced workers from these matings. But a lot
of these workers are entirely produced by clones of this
(14:09):
other species. So the queen kind of becomes like a
clone factory where she's producing clones of this other species
that are then used to meete with to produce hybrid workers. Meanwhile,
she's still doing normal ant things where she's producing future
queens as well as males of her own species. So
(14:33):
the high amount of workers who are fathered by clones
means that, very uniquely among ant species in my Bericus,
queens create a steady supply of clones. You know, like
in Man. I didn't watch all the prequels to Star Wars,
but you know in Star Wars they make a bunch
of a clone army. It's what these queens are doing,
and then they use these clones to father worker ants.
(15:00):
And the study authors liken this to domestication. Definitely very strange,
very very weird dynamics going on. I think this study
is really really cool Chris, As you pointed out, the
concept of species is more of an art than a
rule in nature. The most simple definition of a species
(15:22):
is the biggest category of organism in which the individuals
can mate and produce fertile offspring. This definition is definitely lacking.
What about asexual organisms? Right, So you could say, like, ah,
but so then a species also includes those that individuals
can asexually reproduce. But again, this definition isn'tcomplete given that
(15:46):
hybrids exist, and while most hybrids like mules, are not fertile,
you can sometimes have hybrid species that are fertile. So
often biologists use other markers, either DNA, morphological differences, evolutionary
(16:08):
history to help refine the definition of species. So like
in this case of these ants, these two species diverged
a really long time ago, millions of years ago, and
then it seems like this symbiotic relationship developed after they
had diverged. So that's kind of why they would say
(16:33):
these are different species, even if they're incorporating these other
ants regularly into their mating. But it's definitely a fuzzy category.
There's a lot of gray area, just as there is
for most things in biology. But yeah, of course, there's
so much debate when it comes to species, particularly differentiating
(16:58):
between species and subspecies. There are a whole like species
complexes where you have things often things like butterflies or frogs,
where you have a huge diversity of species, and then
some of them are morphologically genetically extremely similar and can
(17:20):
even potentially mate with each other, but they have a
few differences. So the question is, at one point are
they a different species who can just kind of mate
with each other and produce fertile offspring, and at what
point are they different. It's very hard. It's very hard
to kind of make these categories. There's much a lot
(17:44):
of thought that goes into it that I don't I
don't quite understand. I'm certainly not the authority on what
exactly counts as a species. As for Chris's other question
about whether this is the wildest form of reproduction we know,
I'd say it's really subjective. To me. This study is
(18:06):
really really cool. It's very exciting that you have an
ant species that is basically producing clones of another species
that they're using as a farm for genetic material to
create worker ants. That's incredible. But there's so many examples
(18:26):
of really weird life cycles, super super strange, lots of
cases of sexual and asexual reproduction, assisted reproduction from like
other species, sexual parasites, that all get pretty freaky. I
would say, I think that the what is strangest is
(18:50):
going to be subjective. But I'll offer up an example
of an extremely strange form of reproduction. So I cannot
recall if I've talked about this on the show show before,
but this is the Adactylidium, which is a microscopic arthropod
whose entire life cycle is extremely messed up. So these
(19:12):
are mites. These are teeny teeny teeny tiny mites. Their
microscopic you really can't see them barely at all, I
doubt with the naked eye. So let's start with the
pregnant female. She has up to eight embryos inside her,
all female, and then she has one male embryo. These
(19:36):
develop into reproductively mature mites inside of her, and the
male mates with all the sister females fertilizing them, So
all of this is already happening inside the pregnant female.
Then the offspring eat their way outside of their own mother,
(19:59):
who's only a few days old herself, which kills which
kills her. So this is not the only form of
matrophagi in the animal kingdom. There are other animals that
will eat their own mothers, but this is certainly, I think,
the only case where you have already pregnant females inside
(20:20):
the mother then eating their way outside. You think this
sounds really unfair for the females. The males don't have
much of a life either. After impregnating all of his
sisters inside his own mother, he has no further purpose.
(20:40):
Even if he gets outside of the mother with the sisters,
he doesn't have any instinct to feed or to mate.
He just patiently waits for death to come. The females, meanwhile,
will find a thrip EGGA thrip is another teeny tiny
art pod, So they find an egg of this other
(21:03):
species to feed on, and they are already pregnant because
they were fertilized while they were still inside the mother.
So they feed on an egg and after a few
days the same thing happens to them. So it's a
pretty thankless existence for these mites. Life is an endless
(21:25):
genetic production line and little else. Thankfully, their microscopic they
do not have many brain cells around, not much neural like,
they do have neural cells, but it's not I wouldn't
feel too much existential horror on their behalf because probably
(21:48):
they're not super aware of what's going on. So really
it's us who get to ponder the existential ramifications of
the existence of these Adactylidium mites. So there you go.
I don't know. I wouldn't say it's cooler than the
(22:09):
ant study. I think producing an army of clones of
another species that you harvest their DNA from for your
own workers is also pretty messed up. Nature's very, very
creatively messed up. There's lots of examples. Here's just another one.
Hope you enjoyed that, all right, So we'll take a
real quick break and then get back with another listener question.
(22:36):
So here's another listener question. Hi Katie, longtime listener, first
time questioner. Could you discuss the management of invasive species
and non native species? I find myself torn due to
my love for animals. I understand that invasive species can
negatively impact or even devastate native species, but I have
(22:56):
a hard time with calling them. I suppose it just
upsets me that animals have to suffer due to human errors.
I know that invasive species have to be managed in
some way, but what goes into the decisions on how
to manage them? Who typically has the say and how
they're managed? Are the management strategies usually successful? What happens
(23:17):
when a species is not native but also not harmful?
Would they just be left alone? Are there examples of
non native species being beneficial? Interested in any information about this? Really,
I'd love to know your thoughts so I can understand
it all a bit better. Thank you, Ashley from Kalamazoo. Hi, Ashley,
So this is a great question, and I totally get
(23:38):
where you're coming from. Invasive species aren't evil. It's not
their fault. They usually had no real say and where
they ended up, and they're just trying to survive. Controlling
them is usually very important in protecting ecosystems. But what
about when they simply adapt to their new home without
(23:59):
wreaking havoc? That's a great question. So we know that
certain species like cane toads, cats, black rats, zebra muscles,
longhorn beetles, these are all examples of animals that are
invasive that can be incredibly dangerous to native species. You'll
(24:20):
notice that I mentioned cats I'm talking about the same
type of kiddies that we have as pets. Feral cats
can indeed be considered invasive where they freely roam, breed,
and kill native species, particularly birds. Usually, though we're less
comfortable hunting and killing cats because we love them. They're pets,
(24:45):
so controlling them usually involves spaying and neutering campaigns, though
we do also sometimes trap them and euthanize them. That
does certainly happen either way. I think people are more
squeamish about being the idea of colling feral cats, right
even though we do to a certain extent do it,
(25:05):
although we do it humanely with euthanasia. Yeah, rightfully, So,
we were uncomfortable with the idea of calling these feral
pets that we're the ones who introduced them, and we
also kind of have a more personal relationship with them,
so we understand we frankly like see them more as
(25:28):
an animal with emotions, even though there's plenty of invasive
species that we call that are similarly you know, animals
that have feelings, right, So, like it's just it's kind
of a matter of perspective. Because these are pets, we
empathize with them more even though there's plenty of perfectly complicated,
(25:51):
intelligent animals who are also invasive species. So unfortunately, like
doing a lot of spain and neutering or trapping in,
euthanasia isn't always an option. Uh So, for instance, on islands,
(26:12):
rats can be really really dangerous. So rats are extremely fertile,
they produce a lot of offspring, and so in some places,
if they are not controlled quickly, they can very effectively
wipe out native island populations, and so usually conservationists will
use lethal methods in these in these cases, like using poisons,
(26:37):
which I think is it's sad, right, Like, I think
rats are intelligent little animals. Some people keep them as pets.
I'm sure people who own rats as pets will kind
of really sympathize with this, right because you see, like, yeah,
they they they're they they have they they have a brain,
they have a mind. You know, they're they're simple creature.
(27:00):
But they that doesn't mean that they don't have emotions
and they don't have a level of social intelligence. So
the control of rats is I think always for me
at least, been kind of an uncomfortable an uncomfortable thing
to reckon with, right because in terms of protecting ecosystems
(27:21):
and also protecting human health, controlling rats is pretty important.
But on the other hand, you know, poisoning them rat
poison has a lot of problems, one being that it
is not necessarily very humane way of killing an animal, right,
(27:43):
And then the other is that if you do have
rat populations where they're also predators, you can cause ecological
damage if the predators are eating rats who have been poisoned.
So I really only think in cases where you are
very time constrained, right where rats could easily overtake, say
(28:05):
like an island with a lot of vulnerable bird species,
and you have to control their population really quickly. I
do see why conservations and will sometimes use this, but yeah,
it's certainly not ideal, but at this point, right, logistically,
sometimes it's what has to be done. But that doesn't
mean that humane options are always inconvenient or more expensive.
(28:30):
In fact, I'll bet that at some point more humane
methods will become like the standard. So there are some
wildlife advocates who point out that hunting right, like one
method of colling, is really ineffective. At this point, right,
we don't have there's just not enough people who need
(28:52):
sustenance from huntings that are going out and say like
colling wild boar populations, So it's it's expensive then to
like actually set about trying to purposefully coal and hunt
wild boar. So, uh, there's got to be a more
(29:15):
effective and also more humane option for being able to
control their populations because wild boar can be very destructive
to their ecosystem. And that's also an example of an
animal who I think is intelligent. I'm not against hunting them, right, Like,
I think that that's certainly in a lot of ways
(29:37):
no more if less inhumane than factory farming. But if
you have to cull a bunch of wild bore, right,
that's just more you're and it's not for using their meat, right,
it's just because they are an invasive pest. It's not
a great situation. And I think it would be really
(30:00):
good if we came up with more humane options, and
we are so. Researchers and a college's conservationists are coming
up with more humane methods of controlling populations, and they've
already tried this on gray squirrels. So in the UK,
conservationists are trying to control the gray squirrel population, which
(30:22):
is an invasive species from North America. So you know,
there you go, Britz, you got you got a lot
of our movies, but you also get our terrible squirrels.
So these squirrels are really not a benign invasive species.
They may be cute, but they're devastating the native red
squirrel population in the UK as well as other species
(30:46):
as well as vegetation, so they're not They're not great
in terms of their presence in the UK. Not the
squirrel's fault, but they're there and they're causing problems. So
controlling the squirrel population with hunting not very effective. Poisoning
them not very humane. But also if you have wild species,
(31:11):
like say foxes that are native to the region hunting
squirrels and they get a squirrel that's been poisoned, that's
not good for the fox. So it's like there's not
a great solution there. So what they're coming up with
is oral contraceptives. So this is not a completely new idea.
(31:32):
The idea of basically baiting animals with contraceptives so they
are rendered infertile has been used in a lot of
different cases to try to control populations. It's even on
the genetic level, for mosquito control, creating genetically modified males
that are infertile to reduce the mosquito population. But this
(31:55):
is something that is I think being put into practice
more so for these gray squirrels. What they'll do is
they will lace this hazel nut spread that apparently the
squirrels really love with an oral contraceptive. They put it
(32:15):
in bait boxes that are specifically designed to be accessible
mainly by the gray squirrels. They try to make it
specific so it's really only the gray squirrels getting at
it rather other than a different species or you know,
a different type of animal that they don't want getting
to this contraceptive. So then the squirrels go and eat
(32:38):
the hazel nuts and instead of being killed and poisoned,
they are rendered infertile. This trick would definitely work on me,
by the way, I love hazel nuts. Hazel nuts spread
in a box that's free, Yes, please glad it's not poison.
But yeah. So this is a potentially very effective way
(33:03):
of controlling their population that is already being used in
some instances, and I think probably especially as we if
we put more research into it, and we're able to
maybe even like create contraceptives that are really specific to
a species of animals, So even if another animal eats it,
(33:24):
they're not going to become infertile. Only the targeted animal will.
I think that we could really have very humane ways
of controlling invasive species that are really efficient and you know,
in the long run, if you invest in the short term,
(33:45):
in the long run much more cost effective. So I
don't think that being humane about it is at odds
with efficiency with cost effectiveness, and so I definitely see
this as hopefully being the future of controlling invasive species populations.
(34:09):
All right, So let's talk just some of your other
questions because those are also really interesting. So, like you mentioned,
who basically gets to say and how invasive species are managed.
That's a very complicated issue because it's going to differ
depending on your country, your locality. Even when you look
at one country, the management of it is going to
(34:33):
depend on the administration. So for an example, in the US,
there are a few federal agencies who are involved in
controlling invasive species. Generally speaking, this as part of the
National Invasive Species Council within the US Department of the Interior.
It's a it's a bunch of it's like kind of
(34:53):
a group of people from various federal agencies who oversees
what to do about invasive species, monitoring them and then
actions taken. In twenty nineteen, during Trump's first administration, he
effectively disbanded the National Invasive Species Council by defunding it.
(35:20):
So for a while it was kind of disbanded, and
then under Biden it was reinstated. Currently, I have not seen.
I mean, there's so much news that's constantly happening, so
it's pretty hard to keep up with everything that's going on.
But I don't think it's been officially disbanded. I imagine
(35:44):
it's definitely been affected by government budget cuts, right, So
I don't know if it is as functional as it was.
I think it still exists, but yeah, the cuts to
funding for a lot of these programs, I would imagine
(36:04):
also has an impact on the National Invasive Species Council.
So I my point in bringing all this up is
that invasive species are typically managed by government agencies, but
those are subject to the policies put in place by leaders.
(36:27):
So it's a very it's a it's a pretty complicated
political question that you bring up, like who is actually
monitoring this, who is managing it, who decides what to do.
And again it can also just depend locally, right, you
may have uh, state agencies or city agencies who have
(36:49):
their own their own like monitoring species monitoring, and so
they might come to separate decision. And so let's address
your question of like, are there invasive species who are
beneficial or benign? I looked into this, I think that
(37:13):
there usually uh, it's it kind of depends on what
you how you define a benefit, right and who who
is benefiting. So, because you could argue that say, like
the European honeybee in the US is beneficial to humans
(37:34):
because we get honey from them, right, It's a big
agricultural industry of honey, and certainly we enjoy having honey.
There's a lot of crops and so on that are
that we grow intentionally, and so in terms of beneficial
there are certainly arguments to be made that certain invasive species,
(37:58):
right of crops and animals benefit human beings. Now, in
terms of the environment, I think it's a little harder
to make the case for invasive species being beneficial for
the local habitat. I think often there may be some
(38:21):
there can be some trade offs, right, Like it can
benefit certain species, especially. I'm going to talk mostly about
plants here because it's usually the ones that are more benign.
Are plants not always the case. There can be some
really nasty plants that choke out local plants, So plants
are not Just because it's an invasive plant does not
(38:42):
mean that it's going to be benign, But a lot
of the benign species happen to be plants. And you know,
I think it's like, in some cases, an invasive plant
may benefit y some of the wildlife there, right, Like
(39:02):
you maybe have honeysuckle or something that benefits certain birds
in the area, but then the downside is that that
might outcompete some other kind of plant, right, So saying
it benefits it's a little tricky because, like there's certainly
(39:23):
invasive species that do not cause the collapse of a
local ecosystem. Saying it's beneficial to the local ecosystem is
usually a little more granular, where it might benefit some
species and actually be a detriment to other species, and
so making a determination of it overall, like improving an
(39:48):
ecosystem is usually a little bit more complex. But in
terms of there are some cases where an invasive species
is much less harmful then we fear when it first
arrives on the scene. And an example of this is
the spotted lantern fly. If you live on the east
(40:10):
coast of the US, you've probably you're probably pretty familiar
with this. It's a black and red spotted flying insect.
It's actually a species of plant hopper. It's invasive. It's
from South Korea. Initially, conservations were very concerned that it
(40:30):
would kill a lot of local hardwood trees because plant
hoppers are they there. Their big thing is they go
onto plants and they suck out the juices, and so
researchers were rightfully, in my opinion, very concerned that these
could have a really negative impact on trees, given that
(40:53):
in their native homes they will attack trees, and these
trees that we have in the eastern US did not
co evolve with spotted lantern flies, so they don't have
the same defenses as trees in their native environments. So,
(41:16):
you know, environmental experts were quite concerned and there was
a lot you probably heard a lot of news about
like you're supposed to kill them on site, and these
are going to be a menace Fortunately, at least as
far as the research has shown so far, they're not
as destructive as they originally had feared. I'm going to
(41:39):
make a distinction of like, this does not mean they're good.
They're not good or even benign. But they're not killing
off the trees in the way that initially had been feared.
That doesn't mean that the conservationists the experts were wrong
(42:00):
to sound the alarm. I think it's much better to
approach an invasive species with a lot of caution, try
to nip it in the bud if you can. Obviously
we weren't able to stop there from being this invasion,
but you know, I think the caution was definitely warranted.
(42:21):
But it's simply the nature of science and research that
you when something novel happens, right like an invasive species
comes to an ecosystem. You can guess about certain things
that might happen, but you can't know until you get
the data. And once you get the data, you revise
your understanding of the situation. In this case, local hardwood
(42:45):
tree populations where these spotted lantern flies have been around
I have not been dying off as was feared. That
doesn't mean the lantern flies are benign, they still damage
the trees. The trees are able to withstand the damage
a lot better than what had initially been feared. You
(43:08):
still have the problem of these things damaging trees, right, So,
like if a tree is stressed from a lantern fly,
can imagine if say there's another invasive species, or say
there's a fungus or disease that attacks these trees, you
could in the future still see some kind of really
serious consequence to the invasive spotted lantern fly. So I
(43:32):
wouldn't say that this is enough to say like, ah,
we don't really need to control their population because they're
not killing trees as had been feared. The fact that
they injure and stress the trees is already not great,
and it could be you know, there are it could
be one factor that in the future, in some kind
of event where the trees are put under some other
(43:55):
kind of stress, that could be really devastating. So uh,
it is. It's of course new information and data that
I don't think should be ignored, but it doesn't necessarily
change the calculus that spotted lantern flies still are not
necessarily a benign invasive species. Now this is an interesting thing,
(44:19):
and people were instructed to kill these on site, and
I think still are so. As an individual killing lantern flies,
or even as like a collective of everyone when they
see one, killing one is probably not going to do
(44:42):
a whole lot to the lantern fly population. There's just
too many of them, and just by stomping the ones
you see is not gonna probably make much of a
dent in the lantern fly population. I mean, if this
were the case, we would since we all, I would imagine,
try to kill as many mosquitoes as we can that
(45:04):
would somehow have an effect on the mosquito population, and
it just does not really have a significant effect. So
certainly lantern flies may not be quite as numerous as mosquitoes,
but still they have a healthy population. So killing them
on site, given their ficundity meaning they have a lot
(45:25):
of offspring and their numbers, is not probably going to
really do much of a dent to their numbers. The
reason that experts were saying to kill them when you
see them, the reason that was the instruction was the
(45:47):
more serious potential problem is that a lantern fly could
hitchhike with a human and go somewhere else like into
another region where they're not they have not taken hold,
so like for instance, getting in your car, getting on
your clothes, in some of your property, that's you know,
(46:09):
moving as humans, we like to move around the country.
And then if that happens and you have a hitchhiker
and then they start to invade a new region in
the US, that could be quite consequential. So the killing
them on site is more of a way to prevent
(46:30):
them from Like when you encounter one and it's near
you and you kill it, that reduces the chance that
you're going to have a hitchhiker lantern fly that you
bring with you to another region in the US. I think, honestly,
like I know that public sort of communication, science communication,
(46:53):
public health communication, all these things are really complicated. I
always think that it's better to explain everything to people.
Maybe you can do the simple flyer of like kill
these guys on site because they're invasive, but having some
explanation as to the why. Right, these aren't going to
be dangerous to human beings, They're not going to bite you,
(47:16):
and you're not necessarily on a crusade to stomp out
the lantern flies. Maybe like at the very beginning it
might make a difference. Honestly, I'm pretty doubtful that as well.
I think that there's only a few cases in organisms
that don't reproduce as quickly, like the giant Asian hornets.
(47:39):
We were able to control their population before they got
a foothold, but they're just not as they don't lay
as many eggs. They don't they don't have the ability
to reproduce that lantern flies have. So anyways, so that's
why you are instructed to kill them on site. It
(48:00):
is to prevent you from having them as a hitchhiker.
So if you're not planning at all to move outside
of your you live on the eastern coast of the US,
and you're not traveling anywhere, and you just see one
in your backyard and you don't really feel like killing it,
you're not doing anything wrong. It is pretty much exclusively
(48:21):
the purpose is, like, you know, it gets in your car,
on your stuff, and then you travel somewhere. So yeah,
it's I think that it is. Really there's a lot
of nuance and to this phenomenon of invasive species. I
(48:41):
think it's tricky communicating with the public about it because
usually the efforts are focused on trying to prevent the
most serious harms that could happen due to invasive species,
which might leave little room for subtlety in public messaging.
Right Like you're saying, like, look, lantern flies are a
really cool animal and cool insect and plant hoppers are
(49:04):
amazing and interesting, but also like, you know, kill them.
You know, it's a complicated thing, right, So I do
think that we can both control invasive species understand the
harms that they cause, while also appreciating life, right Like,
(49:26):
I kind of sometimes feel like I get where I've
had this question a few times, and I get where
you're coming from. This discomfort of sometimes it feels like
when there's an invasive species and sort of an effort
to call them, it gives people this like almost permission
maybe to feel like, I don't know, like there is
(49:50):
like an evil enemy to destroy, right, sort of like
in Starship Troopers, right like, Ah, these are insects that
we can destroy and stamp out and with a relish,
And I don't necessarily think it's like really really bad,
right Like, I don't think it's you know, like wanting
to stomp on an invasive insect makes you a bad person.
(50:14):
But I think in general, uh, the kind of like
the way that we view invasive species as almost like malicious, right, Yeah,
I think that that is a little odd, right, it's
ascribing a moral system to them that these insects they
haven't they they didn't decide to accidentally fly over to
(50:40):
the US and some ship shipment of goods, so you know,
to kind of like have this this idea of them
as being evil invaders is certainly not the case. And
I think like the way that the best way really.
I think obviously we can just ignore invasive species because
(51:02):
they can be really devastating. And also I really don't
think it's wrong for conservationists and in collegists to be
very cautious at the beginning of noticing that their invasive
species around, right, So like if they have a really
strong primary response to it, right, and then it turns
out that it's not as devastating as they had feared
(51:22):
it would be, it's not because they're stupid, it's not
because they made some kind of mistake. It's that it's
a huge question because like we simply may not know
what exactly the consequences will be of an invasive species.
It could be a little bad but not super bad,
or could be something like cane toads that are just
this really really insidious force of kind of the worst
(51:50):
type of invasive species that really destroys things, are really hearty,
really tough to get rid of. Again, the cane toads
don't know what they're doing. They're not evil, they have
no intention of driving other animals to extinction. They're innocent
in this situation, but they are really devastating, And so
(52:12):
it makes sense, I think, to have this really strong
response to invasive species. But I think that like having
a full understanding of the situation, being really open to
new information and data as it comes in, which means
funding researchers. Like the more funding that we put into research,
(52:32):
not just in monitoring, but also new techniques of controlling,
like the what I mentioned with the gray squirrels contraceptives.
That's going to be the kind of thing that I
think not only will make this more humane and will
prove our understanding of invasive species, but I think ultimately
(52:54):
is going to be more effective than a lot of
the methods that we currently use. Right So, I I
do not think ecologists conservationists are are in the wrong
on this at all. I think, if anything, we need
to be putting more funding into it so that we
can refine the tools that we use in controlling invasive species,
(53:16):
and I think those do those will become more humane.
The high the more technologically advanced that we become, the
more humane in this case, I think things will be.
So yeah, I think I don't think it's incompatible the
respect for life, but also the understanding of how to
(53:38):
control invasive species and just for goodness sakes, we have
to research it. It's really important. So thanks you guys
so much for listening. I will answer the guests who
squawking Animal sound guessing game next week. Until then, please
do send me your questions at Creature Future podu at
(53:58):
gmail dot com. I really enjoy answering these questions, and
also if you guys point out cool researcher stories, always welcome.
I learn a lot from these emails too, so I
really appreciate that. Thanks to you guys so much for listening,
(54:19):
and thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome
song Exo Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio,
app Apple podcasts or hey, guess what where have you
listened to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I
can't tell you what to do. I don't even feel
confident in telling you whether or not you should kill
(54:41):
spotted lantern flies. But don't let them hitchhike with you,
all Right, If you see a spotted lantern fly and
it's sticking out, it's a little proboscis and sort of
a hitchhiking gesture. Ignore them, leave them alone, don't let
them in your car, don't bring them down to another
US state. It's it's not going to be a good situation.
(55:02):
See you next Wednesday. Mm hmm
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