November 13, 2025 • 54 mins
Join guest hosts Kayci Messerly and Katie Tucker as they travel to the University of Texas at El Paso for a deep dive into duckDNA with Dr. Phil Lavretsky. Together, they explore how hunters are driving groundbreaking genetic discoveries and uncovering the potential causes of unique plumage characteristics in waterfowl. They also reveal the cutting-edge work happening inside Dr. Lavretsky's lab to unlock genetic mysteries shaping waterfowl today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kayci Messerly (01:44):
Hey, everybody. Join us today as we sit down
with doctor Phil Lebretsky atthe University of Texas, El Paso
to learn more about the geneticinsights coming out of Duck DNA.
Stay tuned.
VO (02:05):
Can we do a mic check, please?
Everybody, welcome back to theDucks Unlimited podcast.
I'm your host, doctor MikeBrasher. I'm your host, Katie
Burke. I'm your host, doctorJerad Henson. And I'm your host,
Matt Harrison.
Welcome to the Ducks Unlimitedpodcast, the only podcast about
(02:26):
all things waterfowl. Fromhunting insights to science
based discussions about ducks,geese, and issues affecting
waterfowl and wetlandsconservation in North America.
The DU podcast, sponsored byPurina Pro Plan, the official
performance dog food of DucksUnlimited. Purina Pro Plan,
always advancing. Also proudlysponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey
(02:48):
and Cocktails.
Whether you're winding down withyour best friend or celebrating
with your favorite crew, BirdDog brings award winning flavor
to every moment. Enjoyresponsibly.
Kayci Messerly (03:10):
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Ducks
Unlimited podcast. We'rebringing it to you from the
University of Texas, El Paso. Iam your special host for this
episode, Casey Messerly, andI've got my conservation science
assistant coworker, KatieTucker.
Katie Tucker (03:26):
Yes. I'm here. Katie's here
Kayci Messerly (03:28):
with us, and we are visiting with doctor Phil
Labretsky here at UTEP.
Phil Lavretsky (03:32):
Welcome everybody to El Paso. We've been
having a great time here chasingsome birds, learning about
genetics.
Kayci Messerly (03:38):
Yes. And so today we want to talk to you
about Duck DNA and the geneticinsights that we've learned over
the past few years and thethings that we're hoping to
uncover going forward. And soour one of our favorite Duck DNA
guests, doctor Phil, will have alot to tell us and we'll go from
there. One of the main questionswe hear a lot is when you guys
(03:59):
have sent in your samples, youwonder what's going on behind
the scenes at the lab. Right?
And we can now tell you a littlemore about that because we have
the expert himself, doctor Phil.
Phil Lavretsky (04:12):
And I mean, actually, you guys are not
experts. You got to see thewhole, process. You got to see
the place, the area, the people.You got to talk to everybody.
Unfortunately, Virgie wasn'table to make it here to speak
for her own, sake, but thesamples come in, and, Virgie and
Victoria are the two key peoplehere that, log your samples.
(04:35):
They start the process with DNAextraction, check it on a gel,
make sure that it's all kosher.It goes into PCR amplification,
and then in addition to genomesequencing. And that data would
then get sent out. So that thatyou're looking at a one week
(04:55):
process. It gets sent out to a acompany that we work with, that
we have good relationships with,and they know that this stuff is
coming.
They'll process it as fast aspossible, but sometimes it's not
fast enough. So you're lookingat another two weeks there one
to two weeks. Sometimes it's theit's three days later, but
(05:17):
oftentimes, it's about two weekslater. That data gets in. I take
over.
I do my magic. I figure out whatthese birds are underneath the
hood, and at that point, I putthat together, it goes back to
all of you, and thosecertificates then start getting
sent out.
Kayci Messerly (05:35):
Yeah. I think there's a lot of communication
that our duck hunters have withus, but a lot of times, they
don't get to see the peoplebehind the scenes. We've had a
great time this week getting tosee all the work that you guys
are doing and exactly all thesteps. I know there were a lot
of words you threw around for abunch of the different
processes. We won't necessarilygo into all of those steps
(05:55):
today, but we'll talk a littlebit about those genetic insights
and inquiries that we have basedon that data that we have.
As hunters, I think the thingthat we notice first, right, in
a lot of these birds is thevisual aspect. Our hybrid
participants, that's what we askthem to submit photos of these
birds. Right? Your lab is doinga little bit of work there with
the visual characteristics for aBut lot of these birds as as
(06:18):
geneticists, we look past justthe physical visual
characteristics, and we look alittle deeper. I think there's a
catchphrase you had working outa little bit going on this week.
Phil Lavretsky (06:30):
Actually, I have to actually look it up, because
I really liked it. So I wrote itdown, and it says nature
provides mysteries and we unlockthem. Put that on a t shirt. So
for eons, we could only see theoutside, and we could see what
things look like. Right?
You look at something, you'relike, that's a lion, that's a
snake, that's something else.And oftentimes, we're always
(06:50):
saying, well, those two snakeslook the same. That one's
poisonous. That one must bepoisonous. And then later on,
you're like, oh, that one's notpoisonous.
So what's up with that? And thesame thing goes for a duck. You
could look at the duck and youcould say, yeah. I think these
are the traits that explain thehybrids or this duck or that
duck. Oftentimes, they come withbiases, things that we always
(07:11):
think that might be the case.
And what we do is take away thenecessity of that quote unquote
expert and let the genetics tellthe story. As I always say,
genetics doesn't lie. That's theonly thing that doesn't lie. And
so once you actually know whatyou're working with, then the
follow-up questions can be lessand less biased, and you can
really formulate what thosetraits are that can explain
(07:35):
those species or organisms orhybrids or anything of that
nature.
Kayci Messerly (07:38):
Yeah, and we often talk with Doctor. Mike,
and he's always saying scienceis a process, right? And so work
and do research based on thebest information that we have
available to us at the time, andover the past few decades even,
the amount of material andgenetic work that's been able to
be done has just improved somuch based on our access to
(07:59):
these resources as well. So wehad a little bit of a
conversation earlier aboutvisually ID ing birds, for
example, like in the winged bee,and how we've been able to kind
of look at that moving forwardas
Phil Lavretsky (08:12):
well. Yeah. Yeah. That that was the spur of
so much of the stuff that we'redoing now. In twenty in twenty
ten, I went to a bunch offlyaway wingbees.
If the I'm sure the folkslistening to this probably know
this, but they don't if theydon't, a random set of waterfowl
hunters are chosen by US Fishand Wildlife to submit wings
(08:33):
that go to locations for eachone of the four flyways. And
then at the end of the huntingseason at some point in February
or so, around then, a bunch ofbiologists get to those flyway
locations. They start openingthis Manila envelope with a
bunch of wings, and they startidentifying everything to
(08:54):
species and sex and age. Andthat's important because that
gives us the information abouthow those populations are doing.
They're giving us sex ratios ifthere's some sort of thing
that's happening.
For example, if the populationdid not have a good output, so,
you know, poor nesting, thenwhat you would expect is an
(09:17):
overabundance of adults. If theyhad really good nesting that
previous summer, then you wouldsee a more abundance of hatch
year or first year birds. Andthat tells us things, and then
that goes into some fancy modelsthat that dictate what happens
the following year. But thepoint is that that also gave me
an opportunity to go to a singlelocation and get a bunch of
(09:40):
wings and a bunch of geneticmaterial all at once. And at
that time, I was I was moreinterested about black ducks and
mallards and model ducks.
Well, I'm still interested inthat, but we needed that genetic
material at that time. So I wentthere. I let everybody call
things that are hybrids and, youknow, black deck mallard
hybrids. And, of course, it'sall based on that little white
(10:00):
wing the presence or absence ofthat white wing bar. And I said,
great.
I took that. And then we did thegenetics, and we found that all
of that was only 60% accurate inconfirming hybrid. So
essentially a coin toss, and wepublished this in 2019
showcasing that. And that eventhe Mallards and the Black Ducks
(10:21):
were only 80% accurate with 20%of those that were either
identified as a high as a BlackDuck or a Mallard were actually
hybrids. And so we're obviouslykeying on the wrong traits.
Right? Traits that we thoughtwere indicative of a hybrid are
really naturally occurring, butthey're occurring at different
rates in these populations orthese species. And the same
(10:42):
thing once we use genetics totell us what an individual was.
Florida model ducks, WesternGulf Coast model ducks, and
Mexican ducks all can showshowcase that white a bit of
that white wing bar. It's justat a much smaller proportion,
and it's due to their ancestryfrom the Mallard, the more very
(11:02):
recent and the retention ofthose traits rather than
hybridization.
But the more important thing isthat once we figure out what
hybrids really are, we can thentake over and say, okay. What
are the traits, the physicaltraits that explain these these
differences rather than say,these traits appear to be
(11:23):
different, so let's just usethat. So it's a bit different
approach. But at that time, theydidn't have genetics, so, like,
they went with the best option.And and one story, when they
built out that field key forblack ducks, they based it off a
study where they paired blackducks together, and they would
do these breeding events wherethey would pick an individual
(11:46):
that looked a female that wasjust super black ducky and a
male that was super black ducky,and they'd mate them, and they'd
be like, alright.
All the offspring should beblack ducky. But every single
time, some proportion,especially among the males, were
always had some green in thehead or or a curly tail or black
in the rump and and white wingbar. And they would do this
(12:09):
three different times where theywould pick the most black ducky
looking bird, and someproportion of their offspring
were always that. And that atthat time, they threw their
hands up and said, they must allbe hybrids and just put them out
back on the landscape. But whatthey were really looking at is
the fact that it's part of theirancestry.
You're not gonna get get awayfrom that. That's why they're
(12:31):
always there. Now we have moredata on these black ducks and
the same thing for model ducksand Mexican ducks where first
year males will showcase thosetraits, those mallard like
traits. And if they survive intotheir second year and their
third year, they don't. Theydon't have them.
They don't produce them. So it'ssort of like they're, as I
described, they're a preteenthat can't control their
(12:54):
hormones. And so they'reexpressing weird stuff. And then
they become an adult and atleast pretend to look like a
good duck.
Katie Tucker (13:03):
Is there a way for a hunter to tell, like with a
bird in the hand, if it's ayoung Mexican duck or model duck
that's exhibiting mallard liketraits rather than a hybrid?
Phil Lavretsky (13:11):
There is. But you'd have to know how to age
birds. Right? So you have tolook at the wing and and look at
those covert those primary andsecondary coverts and look at
the shape of them. You have tolook for in the wing or in the
tail, those notch tail feathersthat would tell you quite quite
quickly
Katie Tucker (13:30):
That it's a young bird. Right?
Phil Lavretsky (13:31):
That it's a young bird. Exactly. And so it
takes a it takes it takes effortand knowledge of what you're
looking at. And and I will eventell you that when we were
scientifically collecting inChihuahua, Mexico, and I was
like, sweet. Look at all thesehybrids I'm shooting that we're
collecting there.
None of them turned out to behybrids. And it was only after
(13:53):
we figured out that they weren'thybrids that we started looking,
and what we found what wefigured out is every single bird
that looked like a hybrid wasactually a formative or first
year male. Right? At that time,I just wasn't looking so
closely, but every single one ofthem. And then every single
adult never showed it.
So that plumage retention is areal thing, and it does make
(14:16):
life difficult. But my previousPhD student, Flora Hernandez,
did create a field key forMexican ducks for every age sex
cohort to distinguish a Mexicanduck from a mallard or a hybrid
with 98% confidence. So we knowwe can do it. We can see it. It
does take effort right now.
However, hopefully, we can startthrowing these things into a an
(14:39):
application for hunters to startusing to make life a bit easier.
Kayci Messerly (14:44):
Yeah, and I think that's one of the beauties
right now, right, of Duck DNA isthat if you're out in the field
and there's something that yousee that you don't understand or
that you are unsure about,there's now this outlet and
opportunity to get moreinformation. And like you said,
it's not just based on what wevisually are seeing, because
(15:04):
sometimes these things are quitetricky, and some of the most
trained individuals out therestill struggle with some of that
differentiation.
Phil Lavretsky (15:11):
Absolutely.
Kayci Messerly (15:12):
Yeah. And so now we have Duck DNA, and so there's
some more common things that wesee on our end, on the
application end. We see a lot ofthese leucistic individuals. Can
you tell us a little bit moreabout what's going on underneath
the hood there?
Phil Lavretsky (15:25):
I mean, to the extent that we know. So we know
that ducks can be white. Wildbirds can be white. They can
showcase plumages that shouldn'tbe there because most likely is
that they're naturally they arethe they're a true unicorn.
Unlike a domestic bird or a gamefarm bird or something of of
(15:47):
domestic or captive bredheritage where we can force the
that that trait to be expressedat a higher rate than naturally
occurring, some birds canshowcase that.
And what we're finding inparticular is that there's
there's a few genes responsiblethat we know of. And in
particular, they're found on sexchromosomes, this z w chromosome
(16:12):
system where males are z z, sothey're homozygous, Females are
ZW, hetero they're hetergametic,not homozygous. Homogametic,
same chromosomes. Hetergametic,different chromosomes. So
they're the reverse of humans ormammals.
Kayci Messerly (16:29):
And so just for our audience who might be more
more familiar with the humangroup, you know, because that is
what we are, when we're lookingat it from the human
perspective, we don't think ofit in ZWs. We think of it in
Phil Lavretsky (16:41):
XX and XY. Same system same system evolved in a
completely different way.
Kayci Messerly (16:48):
And so our males are that XY and humans Yeah. And
our females are the XX. But onceagain, just for reiteration,
Katie Tucker (16:54):
for birds
Phil Lavretsky (16:55):
ducks, it's the reverse. And so what we are
seeing is an increase of thoseblonde mallards in particular.
Those are birds in example, thatone black duck was was a blonde,
and they're almost all hens, Ibelieve.
Katie Tucker (17:10):
And there's been one drake
Phil Lavretsky (17:12):
One scap. One So it takes so the the reasoning
behind this is that we know thatseveral of these genes are on
the z chromosome. So a femalewith a knockout for her plumage
type will be blonde or or oreven white, depending on what
(17:33):
happens, with just one knockout.A male requires both of them to
be knocked out.
Kayci Messerly (17:38):
And when you say a knockout in this regard
Phil Lavretsky (17:40):
Meaning a mutation that results in a
nonfunctional gene that resultsin nonfunctional plumage
characteristics.
Kayci Messerly (17:48):
So our audience will probably, based on the way
we kind of say it, right, thatleucistic trait where we have
that lack of melanin beingproduced.
Phil Lavretsky (17:57):
Exactly. It's a lack of the incapability? Yeah,
that's it. Incapability to tolayer on color, black, gray,
red, oranges. These are thetypes of colors that can be
created internally.
And so if you make that genenonfunctional, there's no matter
(18:18):
what diet you have or what youshould look like, you can't look
like.
Katie Tucker (18:22):
And to be fair, I have now recalled also, I
believe we had a Drake pintailthat was leucistic. Yeah. And
and full credit to the hunter ofthat pintail. I don't want him
to think, oh, she just forgot.But So we see these blonde birds
that are all lighter colored.
But we also see White. Thefamous blue wing teal Yes.
Patches of white. What's up withthat?
Phil Lavretsky (18:43):
Yeah. So that's there's two things there. Old
birds will also do that. Sowhere they're they're in
particular, we know that thishappens in a Hawaiian duck and
Laysan duck because they canlive, know, into their ninth or
tenth year. And those olderbirds have struggled to probably
(19:03):
hormonally activate their genesaccurate appropriately.
Right? Where they're layering onthe correct amount of it's sort
of like graying hair. That's howI I just thought of that. It's
sort of like graying hair. Atsome point, you just you just
can't produce the rightcoloration anymore, and you
gotta, you know, buy thatproduct if you wanna do that.
(19:26):
Yeah. So so that pintail, if wecould age it somehow, my
hypothesis would be that it'sprobably old. Right?
Katie Tucker (19:32):
That's so funny.
Phil Lavretsky (19:33):
So you get these these patching situation. Things
that are completely blonde orcompletely white, that's a
mechanism situation, in myopinion. Or that would be what I
would guess.
Kayci Messerly (19:46):
And so the cool part about genetics, right
Phil Lavretsky (19:48):
Is that we can ask this question.
Kayci Messerly (19:49):
We can ask this question, and someday we'll have
the answers to these questions.
Phil Lavretsky (19:54):
Yeah. In a very in a very near future
Kayci Messerly (19:56):
Yes.
Phil Lavretsky (19:56):
The future is today, we will be able to answer
these questions. Because we knowwhat the genes are, but the
problem is that we never hadsufficient sample sizes. Right?
It's in any one of our huntingcareers, we might maybe get one
or two in our lifetime. But DuckDNA essentially lets us get
after every, well, every hunterthat's willing to participate
(20:20):
and now expand our capacitywhere all those lucky people who
get a brewer's duck or a pintailmallard or whatever it is that
year, we can then start to builda repository that would
otherwise be impossible as asingle person or even a few of
us.
Like, the probability of any ofus getting one this year is so
(20:41):
extremely low. But if we butwhen we ask, you know, the
million hunters out there, wecould do this year in and year
out as we've seen with Duck DNAnow where we're getting every
one of these different typesevery single year submitted,
building up these repositoriesthat were otherwise never going
to be there.
Kayci Messerly (20:59):
Yeah. And we're just so extremely grateful for
all of the hunters thatparticipate or apply to
participate, and, like, we havea limited supply of kits at the
moment, and that's unfortunate,but we are so grateful for
people coming back year and yearagain trying to be part of this
process.
Katie Tucker (21:16):
Because I mean and honestly, the more interest
there is, the more likely we canexpand in the future. So.
Phil Lavretsky (21:21):
Yeah. So get your friend Apply. Grandma
Apply. Anybody else that'swilling to apply, your dog. Your
dog.
Kayci Messerly (21:28):
You get Don't apply. Don't your dog. Don't do
that.
Phil Lavretsky (21:31):
Dog retrieves? Ugh.
Kayci Messerly (21:33):
But we've we've had so many great birds to
showcase as well. Just lastmonth, we had Teal Timber Yes. A
brainchild of Katie's here.
Katie Tucker (21:42):
Thank you. Goosetober this month, please
follow.
Kayci Messerly (21:45):
Yeah. Goosetoberfest is currently
going on. Spooky gooses. Yes.Which is also another brainchild
of Katie's.
Congratulations on being so verycreative.
Katie Tucker (21:55):
Well, it's all thanks to the hunter sending in
these birds.
Kayci Messerly (21:57):
I mean, this is true. But we had one very
interesting TLS month.
Katie Tucker (22:02):
Was it perhaps a little one?
Kayci Messerly (22:04):
It was. A little white bird? A little white bird.
Is there more you can tell usabout our little white bird?
Phil Lavretsky (22:10):
It was a green winged teal.
Kayci Messerly (22:11):
It was a green winged teal? And how did we know
that?
Phil Lavretsky (22:13):
I need to I need to caveat so everybody
understands how I do thisprocess and how this process
occurs. I don't know anythingabout the sample except its
genetics. In fact
Kayci Messerly (22:25):
deja vu. Right? On every podcast, we say this,
and there's a reason we saythis.
Phil Lavretsky (22:29):
There I I actually, to be fair, and my and
doctor Mike Brazier can vouchfor this in a future podcast if
he's ever invited again, that Itext him being like, that's what
that bird was? Or that's whatthat bird looked like after
seeing it on Instagram. I don'tactually look at it. I just let
(22:52):
the genetics go, and I call themI I identify the sex based on
genetics, and I identify theirancestry, and then I send that
off. Right?
I don't look who shot it, whereit was shot, what was happening,
what the pictures were. I don'task for any of that information.
And so it really is completely Icompletely go at it, and I call
(23:15):
everything completely blind. Sothis recent one, honestly, when
I called it, I was like, yeah,somebody sends a green wing
teal. So I've added it to ourreference set.
Maybe I should could I I shouldlook at it again. But, like,
yeah, I've ran it several times.Always a green winged teal. The
but more importantly, that themitochondrial is still green
winged teal. And I understandthat some folks have discussed
(23:39):
that maybe this looks like acold duck or, well, that's the
only discussion, actually.
And so what I need to make clearis a cold duck is part of the
mallard domestic mallardcomplex. And so a cold duck was
part of the domestication eventthat happened about twenty five
(24:00):
hundred years ago in in China inthe during the Ming dynasty
where they started todomesticate mallards for
agricultural purposes and otherpurposes. So you could think of
the Peking duck or the Rowans orthe runner ducks or cold ducks.
They all stem from that sort ofevent. That was the wolf to dog
situation.
(24:20):
Right? So at that point, peoplewere making whatever breed that
they were interested in, whetherit was for food, meaning fatter,
better better meat, or for moreegg production, larger eggs,
larger clutches. All of thosekinds of traits have been picked
on, picked for by peoplethroughout time for various
reasons. We'll eventually, I'msure, talk about game farm
(24:42):
mallards, which only in the lasttwo months have I understood or
visualized in my own brain thatit's actually a distinct
domestication event. It was notpart of this old domestication
event because it was KingCharles the second that told
somebody to go out and get wildmallard eggs, bring them to
captivity to once againpropagate.
(25:03):
So it's it's not like somebodygoing out like, oh, let's get a
Pekin' duck and turn it back toa mallard looking thing. That it
was completely distinct. But acold duck is very much in this
larger, older domesticationevent, and thus, they carry old
world a mitochondrial lineage.
Kayci Messerly (25:22):
And so you mentioned this mitochondrial
lineage, and for those of us whomaybe are a last reference to
the mitochondria is that it'sthe powerhouse of the cell.
Right?
Phil Lavretsky (25:32):
I I mean, that'd be amazing if that was the last
thing
Kayci Messerly (25:35):
you knew about it. But you you have the
mitochondrial DNA that you'retalking about Yes. And then you
also have an additional type ofDNA that you're looking at. So
it's not one source ofinformation that you're Correct.
Looking at for each of these.
Phil Lavretsky (25:50):
So for every sample, if you have a
certificate or look or googlingit up right now, you would see
that you have two source ofinformation. One tells you
ancestral proportions. This islike your mom and dad. Who was
your mom and dad? Was it was moma pintail or your dad a mallard
(26:10):
or they were both pintails andthus you're that's why you're a
100% pintail?
That's what that tells us. Andwhen you are a hybrid, it's
that's when the mitochondriallineage is increasingly
important because themitochondrial is only mom. And
so mom gives the mitochondrialDNA to all her kids, the same
exact one. Dad does not provideany of that material. Anybody
(26:32):
who's listening right now, yourbrothers and your sisters, all
have the same mitochondriallineage.
It's completely the same. And soin that case right? So as I
said, if I see that anindividual's 50% Mallard and 50%
Pintail and the mitochondrial isPintail, I knew that mom must
have been a Pintail and dad wasthe green head. And that's how
(26:56):
we can start figuring thosethings out. And in this call non
call duck situation, if it was acall duck, it would it would not
only not have a a green wingteal mitochondrial lineage, but
it would it the and it it wouldhave a a Mallard mitochondrial
lineage.
On top of it, it would alsoancestrally run closer to our
(27:18):
Khaki Campbell reference setthan anything else.
VO (27:29):
Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan and Bird DogWhiskey. After these messages.
Kayci Messerly (29:27):
For those of you that are listening right now, we
recently did a podcast that kindof shows some of this mapping
and grouping that we've beentalking about. So if you go back
and listen to that, there's alsovisuals associated with that
that'll help you kind ofvisualize some of that grouping
that Phil's been talking aboutas well.
Phil Lavretsky (29:43):
So the the main point here is that this sample
was a 100% and ancestrally a100% green winged teal and it
carried a green winged tealmitochondrial haplotype, which
is almost two two million yearsremoved from a Mallard
mitochondrial haplotype. It'snot a Mallard. I don't know how
to make it any better.
Kayci Messerly (30:02):
No. I think that was great and a lot to unpack
there. We talked too aboutknowing, you know, we can
identify who the mom and the dadis, and we've seen some of these
really cool visualcharacteristics where sometimes
it doesn't really look that muchlike mom or dad. Sometimes
there's some characteristicsthat are coming in that are a
(30:23):
little bit in between somethingelse coming in. Can you help us
understand where thesecharacteristics are coming from?
Phil Lavretsky (30:30):
Yeah. What a great question.
Katie Tucker (30:32):
I mean,
Phil Lavretsky (30:32):
I Is it like
Katie Tucker (30:33):
the verstuck with like the cheek patch situation?
Like that kind of thing?
Kayci Messerly (30:37):
It can be a cheek patch. We've also had a
couple of blue wing teal,cinnamon teal hybrids that then
show some shoveler like traitscolor wise, or shoveler blue
winged teal. We've had a couplethat maybe there's some extra
coloration you wouldn'tnecessarily expect between the
two individuals.
Phil Lavretsky (30:54):
Yeah. So so in the genetic world, that's called
transgressive expression, whereyou where the hybrid the
combination of genes between twodistinct parental pools results
in an individual that expressesa trait that neither of the
parents actually have. Now forthe blue wing group, closely
(31:15):
related, and in which case, it'svery likely that those genes are
there, but they are suppressedin certain of the species. So a
blue wing a blue wing teal and acinnamon teal don't express the
green in the head like the shutnorthern shoveler. But when put
together, the mechanism thatsuppresses that likely became
malfunctioning, and thus you geta bit of that green.
(31:38):
The real questions and the realanswers to that will only come
about once we have enough ofthese samples. We're starting to
get close to trying to map out abrewer's duck, so the Gadigal
Mallard because peep enoughpeople have sent in the the
definitely not not nearly asmany as we really need to do
this, but trying to figure outif the expression in a brewer's
(32:01):
duck is stochastic or random.And so it's just dependent on
what what the pair who theparents are and how those g
genomes kind of interacted, oris it predictable? Like, are
there traits that are reallypredictable and constantly seen
in those in those brewer's duck?Again, the only way to do this
(32:22):
completely unfeasible only fiveyears ago is to amass a dataset
that has enough of thatvariation to start asking that
question, and only through DuckDNA currently have we been able
to achieve it.
Kayci Messerly (32:35):
Yeah. And so you you talk about how that those
genomes interact with eachother. When you say that, you
mean how it's mixing they mix.How they mix together.
Phil Lavretsky (32:46):
Yeah. So so imagine you have a gene and it
needs to stay to it needs tostay whole to make the the
cinnamon color. And if you breakit, it's not very good at making
cinnamon. It makes more of likea brownish or maybe even a
green. Right?
And so if the two parents cometogether and break at that point
(33:10):
and maybe either maybemalfunctioning or slightly okay
or maybe it puts together agreen and a red, not all of a
sudden you get other types ofcolors, then that is when that's
the mixing that we're talkingabout, and we don't know how
that mixes. We're hoping tostart some new analyses. Like I
said earlier, we are justgetting to the point where we
(33:31):
have enough of the parent a andthe parent b of all these types
and the hybrids to start askingwhat parts of the genome are
responsible for some of thesetraits. And so, yeah, hopefully,
in the next year or two with theincreasing number of samples
from Duck DNA, work in my lab,we're gonna start mapping out
where these traits are andwhether they're predictable.
(33:54):
Right?
So is the green head on amallard the same location as a
green head on a northernshoveler? That's never been
really asked because nobody'sbeen able to do it. So,
hopefully and the same thingcould go for, like, right, the
colorations of the of reds andoranges, are they the same
processes across all thesespecies? And when they get
(34:14):
broken down, do they do theyresult in the same trait changes
in the hybrid?
Katie Tucker (34:19):
Not to get too nerdy, but the blue in bird
feathers actually isn't apigment. Structural. So that's
interesting when you're talkingabout hybridization with
different colors of feathers.Yeah. There's a blue tint coming
in, and that's totally not evenrelated to a pigment coming from
the bird.
Phil Lavretsky (34:34):
But to make that blue requires a structure, and
the structure is genetics. Yes.Because you need the structure
to be in a specific way. Itnobody can see my hands, so,
like, I don't know what I'mdoing. But, like, I'm creating a
lattice with my hands, and ifthat lattice changes direction,
the way the light hits it wouldwill change it, and thus the
(34:54):
coloration changes.
Katie Tucker (34:55):
So when I see, like, a a purple feather, I'm
like, oh, blue and red. Crazy.But I have a coming back to the
blue winged Ducks, I have aquestion. We've had some
comments about the Northernshoveler Blue Winged Teal
hybrids and their similarity tothe Australasian shoveler.
Phil Lavretsky (35:09):
Oh, that they look the same?
Katie Tucker (35:10):
Yeah. Does that say anything about their
relatedness? Just that they looksimilar?
Phil Lavretsky (35:13):
I mean, so the Australasian shoveler is still
part of the shoveler group, justlike the red shoveler. So
they're all part of the they'restill all part of the blue wing
group. Right? What that actuallytells me is something mixed, and
for whatever reason in theAustralasian shoveler, that was
the trait that was eitherbeneficial in that ecology or
(35:34):
the females began to pick on,right, the sort of mating
situation, and that's what tookoff. Right?
But you're right. That's a greatquestion. If we go to an
Australasian shovel, which wehave two in my freezer, do we
does the genetics line up thatresults in the phenotype of a
hybrid? Is it the same exactmechanism that results in the
(35:55):
Australasian shovel?
Katie Tucker (35:56):
You tell us.
Phil Lavretsky (35:57):
I one day. But that's great. Now I gotta go
back to work, and it's like11PM.
Kayci Messerly (36:03):
Come on, you gotta get on it. It's only
09:40. Them now.
Katie Tucker (36:05):
You got another hour.
Kayci Messerly (36:07):
You talked about the potential to kind of map
some of these characteristics sothat people can understand where
these traits are coming from.Where is this information coming
from so you know where to mapit? Is it all coming out of your
lab? Is this information that'sbeen built over time you have
resources to?
Phil Lavretsky (36:26):
Yeah, yeah. So a combination of a lot of that. So
for a very long so there's awhole bunch of other labs that
are trying to understand geneticmechanisms. So like, what does
this gene do, or what does thatgene do? And so they'll map.
They'll figure out what they areby doing a whole bunch of
different experiments. A lot ofit comes from mammalian systems,
(36:49):
because obviously that's what westudy. And so what we're a lot
of that is mapped that way, andso we have to make some
additional inferences. Right? Soif we have a gene that is quote,
unquote, coded for hair folliclegrowth as it would be in a
mammal, we would think thatthat's a gene important for
(37:10):
feather growth as well.
We'd have to make that leap.That being said, color in birds
has been studied extensively.Many of those genes have been
mapped. They're particularly on,as we had talked about earlier,
on the sex chromosome, but alsoon chromosome one. And luckily
enough, our markers are hittingthose locations.
I know this because we've lookedat this. And so because of that,
(37:33):
we can start looking how many ofthese genes are associated to
particular traits and andwhether they are, right, or
whether it's some other thingthat we don't know about. So the
nice thing is that the genome isgenerally mapped through all
through all of these otherresearch programs and and work
(37:53):
and studies across the world,and we can use that information
to make additional inferencesand start mapping it out that
way. If anybody's done 23 and Mewhen it was alive or
ancestry.com and you have allthese things, you're like, oh,
you are, you know, you have aten percent chance of having
diabetes because you have thesegenes. We can do the same thing,
(38:14):
except it'd be like, that's whythis bird had a red patch.
Kayci Messerly (38:18):
That's super cool. Getting very close to some
very exciting things for sure.But it it is exciting how all of
this can build upon each other.You know, this information
that's out there can informthese new findings that we're
having and allows us to targetspecific characteristics that
we're looking for. Anotheraspect, you know, that about
(38:41):
this is that we're not justlooking for visual
characteristics.
That's some of the most obviousthings for someone out in the
field who's got the bird inhand, right, but genetics is so
much more too, than just what wesee on the surface of the bird.
What are some of the otherthings that your lab is diving
into or is really interested inthat maybe is not something we
(39:03):
can just see?
Phil Lavretsky (39:04):
Yeah, I mean, so a lot of the things that we're
that we're diving into theunderneath the, like, the the
the feathers really having to doand, obviously, we can expand on
this for any other species. Butwe're right now super keen in
understanding how thedomestication process has
changed the game farm mallardfrom its wild ancestor. So you
(39:27):
guys got to listen to some ofthe talks from, you know, little
speed talks, although they'resupposed to be speedy, they
weren't sometimes, but, like,some of the things that we're
doing. And we're throwingkitchen sink at this thing and
and trying to figure out, okay.Genetically, these things are
different.
Can we tie it to a a truemechanism? Can we tie it to that
(39:48):
the brains are different, thattheir functionality is
different, that their metabolismis different, that their feeding
efficiency is different, thatthe survive that their migratory
behavior is different, that thesurvival is different, that
their habitat choices are alldifferent. And right now, we've
been able to have a prettyamazingly, so genetic link
(40:08):
association to all of thosetraits. Right? We know that some
proportion of those traits areexplained by genetics, and
there's always environment,obviously.
The just like you your ownheight. Right? Obviously, I was
supposed to be an awesomefootball player, but I just
didn't get the rightenvironment, and I never got
picked by the 49ers. So I'm ageneticist. So that that's that
(40:33):
in a nutshell is is what iteverything's got genetics and
environment that explain thetrait itself.
And we're trying to dive intohow much does the genetics play
a role. And currently, all ofthe traits we've looked at have
we've identified that theancestry of those individuals
(40:56):
dictates the trait at a reallyhigh correlation. And now what
we're able to do, as we talkedabout earlier, because we have
all this genetic material, wecan pinpoint where on the genome
that has changed and how it'schanged that explains the brain
change, that the migratorybehavioral changes, the
physiological changes, thebehavioral changes. All of these
(41:19):
things have a genetic component,and we're racing to find them.
Kayci Messerly (41:23):
And so all of these characteristics, whether
they're physiological,behavioral, you know, these
visual characteristics thatpeople can see, are spread
throughout the genome? They'reclose by to each other?
Phil Lavretsky (41:37):
We don't know.
Kayci Messerly (41:38):
It could be any of these things.
Phil Lavretsky (41:39):
Yeah. So every chromosome that mom and dad gave
you has an important role toplay. Much like you, they all
have an important role to playfor a duck, right? So migration
might be several genes onseveral chromosomes. The brain
might be a few genes on onechromosome.
Right? They're all together.They all have to be together in
(42:01):
a particular way to make a wildbrain that knows it's time to
migrate. It's time to feed. It'stime to nest.
All of those innate responsesthat these things have. And so
that's what we're that's abottom line of my research
program is to also understandhow much of this is how much is
genetics responsible and wherein the genome. And is it always
(42:24):
the same ones when you'relooking at different species?
Did it independently evolve in ato migrate in a in a pintail as
it did in a mallard? Like, wecan start asking those kinds of
questions as we build this dataup.
On top and on top of it, we knowwhere these birds went. We know
how what tie the timing of theirmigration. We know where they
(42:45):
were harvested so we can extractthe information, whether it was
rural or whether it was urban,and whether the and so we can
start testing if there's geneticchanges that are resulting at a
population level for birds toall of a sudden be more or less
overt to urban settings. Justthat simple question. You know?
(43:06):
Are mallards doing better inurban settings just because
they're domestic, or there's achange? You know? These kinds of
questions. Are pintail and othermore wild birds or averting from
those locations more so thanothers? Right?
So these kinds of questions wecan start asking.
Katie Tucker (43:21):
And this is thanks to the hunter scientists from
Duck DNA.
Phil Lavretsky (43:24):
100%. Thank you.
Kayci Messerly (43:26):
And so so you're talking about these selection
pressures that can help, youknow, kind of these changes one
way or the other. Are therecertain areas that are just
naturally more likely to pick upthese changes, or certain areas
that are less likely to bechanged, remixed?
Phil Lavretsky (43:44):
So evolution So these changes evolved over eons.
Right? Generations of pintailand mallards and green winged
teal all surviving and breeding,and the next generation
hopefully being better than theprevious. Right? And the if
things rapidly change like itdid for the dinosaurs or the
(44:06):
mammoths, they die.
Right? They can't keep up withchange at that kind of pace. It
takes a long it's a longprocess. It's not like, hey,
polar bear, you know, get readyto come to El Paso. You know?
That's not gonna work outbecause they become they were so
well adapted to the ecology thatthey had. Right? That they went
so far ahead that there reallyis nothing else that they can be
(44:28):
good at. What ducks are good at,though, their adaptability,
quote, unquote, is the fact thatthey're able if there is water,
they can find it. And so whetherthey have to fly a few more 100
kilometers north to find it inthe Northwest Territories now
rather than the prairie potholesis another kind of question.
Right? There it but they have tohave that innate response to go
(44:51):
find it. It's kinda like salmon.They have to they have to have
the capacity to swim swimupstream to make kids, but so
many captive salmon lose thattrait, and in which case, you
could have a whole bunch ofsalmon out there, but nobody's
coming up.
Kayci Messerly (45:06):
I think as we we've been here over the past
couple of days, which feels likeso much longer, but also that we
need so much more time here atthe same time, we've had a great
time going through the lab.We've seen Hunter's notes that
have been sent in fromparticipants that have sent
their samples in and got tospeak to Virgie and Victoria
(45:26):
about how those little notes canreally brighten your day and get
you excited about the next runthat you're doing and all of
that excitement. What has beensome of the most interesting and
exciting things that have comeout of this for you that maybe
you didn't even expect over thelast few years?
Phil Lavretsky (45:44):
Well, I didn't expect any notes. And to be
fair, I don't actually see thosenotes. So the samples come in
and my team gets them.
Kayci Messerly (45:52):
They don't tell you?
Phil Lavretsky (45:53):
They don't even tell me.
Kayci Messerly (45:54):
Oh, no.
Phil Lavretsky (45:54):
And so and so I want you to you, the audience,
and those that are participatingin Duck DNA, to please go ahead
and write those notes. My teamloves those notes, and you're
right. Like, after a good, youknow, me shaking my finger and
being really angry moment, thosenotes keep them, you know, happy
(46:15):
and alive and wanting to processyour samples as fast as
possible, and and, yeah, it doesit does cheer them up. They
loved all the notes that theyget through the program in the
boxes themselves. Me, on my end,is the fact that we are going
into year three.
I didn't even under I didn't seethat coming. The fact that other
(46:37):
people are just as excited as Iwas when me and and Mike Brazier
had this conversation, and thenI was sitting in a duck blind.
I'd be like, yeah. That thiswould be super awesome as I shot
a green head, and I'm like, god.I hope there's no Game Farm
genes in this thing.
And I'm like, I wonder ifanybody else would have that
thought. And now we know thatthere's a ton of folks, and I'm
(46:59):
appreciative of that. That'sbeen the biggest light bulb
moment or or or whatever youwanna call it at this hour.
Kayci Messerly (47:06):
I think we as scientists just get so excited
and kind of into our work thatwe get very passionate about it,
and sometimes that passion maynot be shared by a wide group or
a wide audience, and to get tosee that actually happen and
take light and people reallylove and pour into this project
(47:26):
has been just insane. And thosenotes of enthusiasm and
encouragement go a long way too.
Phil Lavretsky (47:33):
Oh,
Katie Tucker (47:33):
yeah. And the email's to us too. Yes.
DuckDNAdux dot org. Just andlike, I come from a laboratory
science background and justinteracting with members of the
public that care about all ofthis stuff just as much as I do,
like, literally brings tears tomy eyes sometimes.
I'm just so grateful
Kayci Messerly (47:48):
to work with the hunters that that are so
invested in the wildlife. Yeah,it's a very rewarding and
humbling experience, and to getto sit down with you and your
team and the people that havebuilt this, you know, from the
ground up, birthed it intoexistence, you know, with the
support and power of the huntersbehind the project, it has been
(48:11):
just very humbling andincredible over the time we've
got to spend with it.
Phil Lavretsky (48:15):
Absolutely. I mean, I couldn't say it any
better. But I did wanna I didwanna say that some things on
the horizon that we're hoping toget the timetable figured out,
you know, for this year, we'restill looking at that eight to
ten weeks. And in all honesty,the reason behind that is the
fact that hunting seasons alignwith holiday season. And so
(48:39):
places shut down.
We have to wait to send outsequences, especially for those
of you who finish out yourseasons at the November. Right?
You're sending it in. A lot ofthe the sequencing facilities
are closed come even as early asDecember 15. And they and and
then UTEP itself is closed, andit doesn't even open till, like,
(49:02):
mid January.
And so we're constantly battlingthis this you know, juggling
these dates and trying to getahead of it all the time. But
sometimes it's just impossiblebecause, you know, you've gotta
wait for others and the youknow, these pumpkin spice
lattes.
Kayci Messerly (49:20):
So Don't hate on the pumpkin spice lattes. No.
That's gonna be a problem.
Phil Lavretsky (49:24):
But I will say, and you guys saw it. It's not
operational, but, like, we dohave a robot. We hope that that
is going to actually quicken thepace. We're gonna we're gonna
implement it, I hope, this yearfor the first time. We'll see
what that looks like.
We'll play around with the itsabilities and to see how we can
maximize its output to minimizetime to completion. But, again,
(49:50):
everybody who's listening andparticipating, you know, think
about it as an eight to ten weekkind of process from you sending
it out to you receiving yourcertificates.
Kayci Messerly (49:59):
A reminder that science is a process. We learn
as we go. Science takes time,and this is probably one of the
most rapid turnarounds I've seenin any science that I've been a
part of.
Phil Lavretsky (50:10):
Genetics in particular, which used to be
years Yeah. Sometimes in theyears to the And so it's always
been my goal to be able to getthings to the point where
genetics is a tool that providesinformation within the
management time frame. And Ithink we're getting there. So
Kayci Messerly (50:33):
And ask your questions. Continue to fuel the
curiosity. Curiosity. That'ssomething that gets us engaged
and encouraged as well. Ask thequestions you have.
Don't be afraid. We have lots ofanswers and if we don't know, we
just find Phil and we shove himin the comments section. Yes.
Phil Lavretsky (50:48):
Absolutely. And I was gonna say, you can get
ahold of me through variousways, through the Duck DNA team
or you can even contact medirectly. Instagram is at,
lavretskylab or it's,plavretsky@utep.edu. You could
just find my email at our labwebsite. If you just do the
(51:08):
doctor Phil Ducks genetics onGoogle, I'm sure you could find
Kayci Messerly (51:12):
it. But they know how
Katie Tucker (51:13):
to spell your last name by now, probably.
Phil Lavretsky (51:15):
Yeah. It's Gretsky with love, loveretsky.
Kayci Messerly (51:19):
Well, thank you for sitting down with us, Phil.
After a a long couple of days,we stole your night hours away
from you as well. We reallyappreciate it and our audience
does too. We look forward todoing this hopefully again real
soon.
Phil Lavretsky (51:33):
Next time at your house.
Kayci Messerly (51:34):
Next time in Memphis. Okay. A special thanks
to our guests, doctor PhilLebretsky, Katie Tucker, and our
producers, as well as, ofcourse, our listeners. And thank
you for supporting wetlands andwaterfowl conservation.
VO (51:50):
Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by
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Be sure to rate, review, andsubscribe to the show and visit
ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinionsexpressed by guests do not
necessarily reflect those ofDucks Unlimited. Until next
time, stay tuned to the Ducks.
Hey, everybody. Join us today as we sit down
with doctor Phil Lebretsky atthe University of Texas, El Paso
to learn more about the geneticinsights coming out of Duck DNA.
Stay tuned.
VO (02:05):
Can we do a mic check, please?
Everybody, welcome back to theDucks Unlimited podcast.
I'm your host, doctor MikeBrasher. I'm your host, Katie
Burke. I'm your host, doctorJerad Henson. And I'm your host,
Matt Harrison.
Welcome to the Ducks Unlimitedpodcast, the only podcast about
(02:26):
all things waterfowl. Fromhunting insights to science
based discussions about ducks,geese, and issues affecting
waterfowl and wetlandsconservation in North America.
The DU podcast, sponsored byPurina Pro Plan, the official
performance dog food of DucksUnlimited. Purina Pro Plan,
always advancing. Also proudlysponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey
(02:48):
and Cocktails.
Whether you're winding down withyour best friend or celebrating
with your favorite crew, BirdDog brings award winning flavor
to every moment. Enjoyresponsibly.
Kayci Messerly (03:10):
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Ducks
Unlimited podcast. We'rebringing it to you from the
University of Texas, El Paso. Iam your special host for this
episode, Casey Messerly, andI've got my conservation science
assistant coworker, KatieTucker.
Katie Tucker (03:26):
Yes. I'm here. Katie's here
Kayci Messerly (03:28):
with us, and we are visiting with doctor Phil
Labretsky here at UTEP.
Phil Lavretsky (03:32):
Welcome everybody to El Paso. We've been
having a great time here chasingsome birds, learning about
genetics.
Kayci Messerly (03:38):
Yes. And so today we want to talk to you
about Duck DNA and the geneticinsights that we've learned over
the past few years and thethings that we're hoping to
uncover going forward. And soour one of our favorite Duck DNA
guests, doctor Phil, will have alot to tell us and we'll go from
there. One of the main questionswe hear a lot is when you guys
(03:59):
have sent in your samples, youwonder what's going on behind
the scenes at the lab. Right?
And we can now tell you a littlemore about that because we have
the expert himself, doctor Phil.
Phil Lavretsky (04:12):
And I mean, actually, you guys are not
experts. You got to see thewhole, process. You got to see
the place, the area, the people.You got to talk to everybody.
Unfortunately, Virgie wasn'table to make it here to speak
for her own, sake, but thesamples come in, and, Virgie and
Victoria are the two key peoplehere that, log your samples.
(04:35):
They start the process with DNAextraction, check it on a gel,
make sure that it's all kosher.It goes into PCR amplification,
and then in addition to genomesequencing. And that data would
then get sent out. So that thatyou're looking at a one week
(04:55):
process. It gets sent out to a acompany that we work with, that
we have good relationships with,and they know that this stuff is
coming.
They'll process it as fast aspossible, but sometimes it's not
fast enough. So you're lookingat another two weeks there one
to two weeks. Sometimes it's theit's three days later, but
(05:17):
oftentimes, it's about two weekslater. That data gets in. I take
over.
I do my magic. I figure out whatthese birds are underneath the
hood, and at that point, I putthat together, it goes back to
all of you, and thosecertificates then start getting
sent out.
Kayci Messerly (05:35):
Yeah. I think there's a lot of communication
that our duck hunters have withus, but a lot of times, they
don't get to see the peoplebehind the scenes. We've had a
great time this week getting tosee all the work that you guys
are doing and exactly all thesteps. I know there were a lot
of words you threw around for abunch of the different
processes. We won't necessarilygo into all of those steps
(05:55):
today, but we'll talk a littlebit about those genetic insights
and inquiries that we have basedon that data that we have.
As hunters, I think the thingthat we notice first, right, in
a lot of these birds is thevisual aspect. Our hybrid
participants, that's what we askthem to submit photos of these
birds. Right? Your lab is doinga little bit of work there with
the visual characteristics for aBut lot of these birds as as
(06:18):
geneticists, we look past justthe physical visual
characteristics, and we look alittle deeper. I think there's a
catchphrase you had working outa little bit going on this week.
Phil Lavretsky (06:30):
Actually, I have to actually look it up, because
I really liked it. So I wrote itdown, and it says nature
provides mysteries and we unlockthem. Put that on a t shirt. So
for eons, we could only see theoutside, and we could see what
things look like. Right?
You look at something, you'relike, that's a lion, that's a
snake, that's something else.And oftentimes, we're always
(06:50):
saying, well, those two snakeslook the same. That one's
poisonous. That one must bepoisonous. And then later on,
you're like, oh, that one's notpoisonous.
So what's up with that? And thesame thing goes for a duck. You
could look at the duck and youcould say, yeah. I think these
are the traits that explain thehybrids or this duck or that
duck. Oftentimes, they come withbiases, things that we always
(07:11):
think that might be the case.
And what we do is take away thenecessity of that quote unquote
expert and let the genetics tellthe story. As I always say,
genetics doesn't lie. That's theonly thing that doesn't lie. And
so once you actually know whatyou're working with, then the
follow-up questions can be lessand less biased, and you can
really formulate what thosetraits are that can explain
(07:35):
those species or organisms orhybrids or anything of that
nature.
Kayci Messerly (07:38):
Yeah, and we often talk with Doctor. Mike,
and he's always saying scienceis a process, right? And so work
and do research based on thebest information that we have
available to us at the time, andover the past few decades even,
the amount of material andgenetic work that's been able to
be done has just improved somuch based on our access to
(07:59):
these resources as well. So wehad a little bit of a
conversation earlier aboutvisually ID ing birds, for
example, like in the winged bee,and how we've been able to kind
of look at that moving forwardas
Phil Lavretsky (08:12):
well. Yeah. Yeah. That that was the spur of
so much of the stuff that we'redoing now. In twenty in twenty
ten, I went to a bunch offlyaway wingbees.
If the I'm sure the folkslistening to this probably know
this, but they don't if theydon't, a random set of waterfowl
hunters are chosen by US Fishand Wildlife to submit wings
(08:33):
that go to locations for eachone of the four flyways. And
then at the end of the huntingseason at some point in February
or so, around then, a bunch ofbiologists get to those flyway
locations. They start openingthis Manila envelope with a
bunch of wings, and they startidentifying everything to
(08:54):
species and sex and age. Andthat's important because that
gives us the information abouthow those populations are doing.
They're giving us sex ratios ifthere's some sort of thing
that's happening.
For example, if the populationdid not have a good output, so,
you know, poor nesting, thenwhat you would expect is an
(09:17):
overabundance of adults. If theyhad really good nesting that
previous summer, then you wouldsee a more abundance of hatch
year or first year birds. Andthat tells us things, and then
that goes into some fancy modelsthat that dictate what happens
the following year. But thepoint is that that also gave me
an opportunity to go to a singlelocation and get a bunch of
(09:40):
wings and a bunch of geneticmaterial all at once. And at
that time, I was I was moreinterested about black ducks and
mallards and model ducks.
Well, I'm still interested inthat, but we needed that genetic
material at that time. So I wentthere. I let everybody call
things that are hybrids and, youknow, black deck mallard
hybrids. And, of course, it'sall based on that little white
(10:00):
wing the presence or absence ofthat white wing bar. And I said,
great.
I took that. And then we did thegenetics, and we found that all
of that was only 60% accurate inconfirming hybrid. So
essentially a coin toss, and wepublished this in 2019
showcasing that. And that eventhe Mallards and the Black Ducks
(10:21):
were only 80% accurate with 20%of those that were either
identified as a high as a BlackDuck or a Mallard were actually
hybrids. And so we're obviouslykeying on the wrong traits.
Right? Traits that we thoughtwere indicative of a hybrid are
really naturally occurring, butthey're occurring at different
rates in these populations orthese species. And the same
(10:42):
thing once we use genetics totell us what an individual was.
Florida model ducks, WesternGulf Coast model ducks, and
Mexican ducks all can showshowcase that white a bit of
that white wing bar. It's justat a much smaller proportion,
and it's due to their ancestryfrom the Mallard, the more very
(11:02):
recent and the retention ofthose traits rather than
hybridization.
But the more important thing isthat once we figure out what
hybrids really are, we can thentake over and say, okay. What
are the traits, the physicaltraits that explain these these
differences rather than say,these traits appear to be
(11:23):
different, so let's just usethat. So it's a bit different
approach. But at that time, theydidn't have genetics, so, like,
they went with the best option.And and one story, when they
built out that field key forblack ducks, they based it off a
study where they paired blackducks together, and they would
do these breeding events wherethey would pick an individual
(11:46):
that looked a female that wasjust super black ducky and a
male that was super black ducky,and they'd mate them, and they'd
be like, alright.
All the offspring should beblack ducky. But every single
time, some proportion,especially among the males, were
always had some green in thehead or or a curly tail or black
in the rump and and white wingbar. And they would do this
(12:09):
three different times where theywould pick the most black ducky
looking bird, and someproportion of their offspring
were always that. And that atthat time, they threw their
hands up and said, they must allbe hybrids and just put them out
back on the landscape. But whatthey were really looking at is
the fact that it's part of theirancestry.
You're not gonna get get awayfrom that. That's why they're
(12:31):
always there. Now we have moredata on these black ducks and
the same thing for model ducksand Mexican ducks where first
year males will showcase thosetraits, those mallard like
traits. And if they survive intotheir second year and their
third year, they don't. Theydon't have them.
They don't produce them. So it'ssort of like they're, as I
described, they're a preteenthat can't control their
(12:54):
hormones. And so they'reexpressing weird stuff. And then
they become an adult and atleast pretend to look like a
good duck.
Katie Tucker (13:03):
Is there a way for a hunter to tell, like with a
bird in the hand, if it's ayoung Mexican duck or model duck
that's exhibiting mallard liketraits rather than a hybrid?
Phil Lavretsky (13:11):
There is. But you'd have to know how to age
birds. Right? So you have tolook at the wing and and look at
those covert those primary andsecondary coverts and look at
the shape of them. You have tolook for in the wing or in the
tail, those notch tail feathersthat would tell you quite quite
quickly
Katie Tucker (13:30):
That it's a young bird. Right?
Phil Lavretsky (13:31):
That it's a young bird. Exactly. And so it
takes a it takes it takes effortand knowledge of what you're
looking at. And and I will eventell you that when we were
scientifically collecting inChihuahua, Mexico, and I was
like, sweet. Look at all thesehybrids I'm shooting that we're
collecting there.
None of them turned out to behybrids. And it was only after
(13:53):
we figured out that they weren'thybrids that we started looking,
and what we found what wefigured out is every single bird
that looked like a hybrid wasactually a formative or first
year male. Right? At that time,I just wasn't looking so
closely, but every single one ofthem. And then every single
adult never showed it.
So that plumage retention is areal thing, and it does make
(14:16):
life difficult. But my previousPhD student, Flora Hernandez,
did create a field key forMexican ducks for every age sex
cohort to distinguish a Mexicanduck from a mallard or a hybrid
with 98% confidence. So we knowwe can do it. We can see it. It
does take effort right now.
However, hopefully, we can startthrowing these things into a an
(14:39):
application for hunters to startusing to make life a bit easier.
Kayci Messerly (14:44):
Yeah, and I think that's one of the beauties
right now, right, of Duck DNA isthat if you're out in the field
and there's something that yousee that you don't understand or
that you are unsure about,there's now this outlet and
opportunity to get moreinformation. And like you said,
it's not just based on what wevisually are seeing, because
(15:04):
sometimes these things are quitetricky, and some of the most
trained individuals out therestill struggle with some of that
differentiation.
Phil Lavretsky (15:11):
Absolutely.
Kayci Messerly (15:12):
Yeah. And so now we have Duck DNA, and so there's
some more common things that wesee on our end, on the
application end. We see a lot ofthese leucistic individuals. Can
you tell us a little bit moreabout what's going on underneath
the hood there?
Phil Lavretsky (15:25):
I mean, to the extent that we know. So we know
that ducks can be white. Wildbirds can be white. They can
showcase plumages that shouldn'tbe there because most likely is
that they're naturally they arethe they're a true unicorn.
Unlike a domestic bird or a gamefarm bird or something of of
(15:47):
domestic or captive bredheritage where we can force the
that that trait to be expressedat a higher rate than naturally
occurring, some birds canshowcase that.
And what we're finding inparticular is that there's
there's a few genes responsiblethat we know of. And in
particular, they're found on sexchromosomes, this z w chromosome
(16:12):
system where males are z z, sothey're homozygous, Females are
ZW, hetero they're hetergametic,not homozygous. Homogametic,
same chromosomes. Hetergametic,different chromosomes. So
they're the reverse of humans ormammals.
Kayci Messerly (16:29):
And so just for our audience who might be more
more familiar with the humangroup, you know, because that is
what we are, when we're lookingat it from the human
perspective, we don't think ofit in ZWs. We think of it in
Phil Lavretsky (16:41):
XX and XY. Same system same system evolved in a
completely different way.
Kayci Messerly (16:48):
And so our males are that XY and humans Yeah. And
our females are the XX. But onceagain, just for reiteration,
Katie Tucker (16:54):
for birds
Phil Lavretsky (16:55):
ducks, it's the reverse. And so what we are
seeing is an increase of thoseblonde mallards in particular.
Those are birds in example, thatone black duck was was a blonde,
and they're almost all hens, Ibelieve.
Katie Tucker (17:10):
And there's been one drake
Phil Lavretsky (17:12):
One scap. One So it takes so the the reasoning
behind this is that we know thatseveral of these genes are on
the z chromosome. So a femalewith a knockout for her plumage
type will be blonde or or oreven white, depending on what
(17:33):
happens, with just one knockout.A male requires both of them to
be knocked out.
Kayci Messerly (17:38):
And when you say a knockout in this regard
Phil Lavretsky (17:40):
Meaning a mutation that results in a
nonfunctional gene that resultsin nonfunctional plumage
characteristics.
Kayci Messerly (17:48):
So our audience will probably, based on the way
we kind of say it, right, thatleucistic trait where we have
that lack of melanin beingproduced.
Phil Lavretsky (17:57):
Exactly. It's a lack of the incapability? Yeah,
that's it. Incapability to tolayer on color, black, gray,
red, oranges. These are thetypes of colors that can be
created internally.
And so if you make that genenonfunctional, there's no matter
(18:18):
what diet you have or what youshould look like, you can't look
like.
Katie Tucker (18:22):
And to be fair, I have now recalled also, I
believe we had a Drake pintailthat was leucistic. Yeah. And
and full credit to the hunter ofthat pintail. I don't want him
to think, oh, she just forgot.But So we see these blonde birds
that are all lighter colored.
But we also see White. Thefamous blue wing teal Yes.
Patches of white. What's up withthat?
Phil Lavretsky (18:43):
Yeah. So that's there's two things there. Old
birds will also do that. Sowhere they're they're in
particular, we know that thishappens in a Hawaiian duck and
Laysan duck because they canlive, know, into their ninth or
tenth year. And those olderbirds have struggled to probably
(19:03):
hormonally activate their genesaccurate appropriately.
Right? Where they're layering onthe correct amount of it's sort
of like graying hair. That's howI I just thought of that. It's
sort of like graying hair. Atsome point, you just you just
can't produce the rightcoloration anymore, and you
gotta, you know, buy thatproduct if you wanna do that.
(19:26):
Yeah. So so that pintail, if wecould age it somehow, my
hypothesis would be that it'sprobably old. Right?
Katie Tucker (19:32):
That's so funny.
Phil Lavretsky (19:33):
So you get these these patching situation. Things
that are completely blonde orcompletely white, that's a
mechanism situation, in myopinion. Or that would be what I
would guess.
Kayci Messerly (19:46):
And so the cool part about genetics, right
Phil Lavretsky (19:48):
Is that we can ask this question.
Kayci Messerly (19:49):
We can ask this question, and someday we'll have
the answers to these questions.
Phil Lavretsky (19:54):
Yeah. In a very in a very near future
Kayci Messerly (19:56):
Yes.
Phil Lavretsky (19:56):
The future is today, we will be able to answer
these questions. Because we knowwhat the genes are, but the
problem is that we never hadsufficient sample sizes. Right?
It's in any one of our huntingcareers, we might maybe get one
or two in our lifetime. But DuckDNA essentially lets us get
after every, well, every hunterthat's willing to participate
(20:20):
and now expand our capacitywhere all those lucky people who
get a brewer's duck or a pintailmallard or whatever it is that
year, we can then start to builda repository that would
otherwise be impossible as asingle person or even a few of
us.
Like, the probability of any ofus getting one this year is so
(20:41):
extremely low. But if we butwhen we ask, you know, the
million hunters out there, wecould do this year in and year
out as we've seen with Duck DNAnow where we're getting every
one of these different typesevery single year submitted,
building up these repositoriesthat were otherwise never going
to be there.
Kayci Messerly (20:59):
Yeah. And we're just so extremely grateful for
all of the hunters thatparticipate or apply to
participate, and, like, we havea limited supply of kits at the
moment, and that's unfortunate,but we are so grateful for
people coming back year and yearagain trying to be part of this
process.
Katie Tucker (21:16):
Because I mean and honestly, the more interest
there is, the more likely we canexpand in the future. So.
Phil Lavretsky (21:21):
Yeah. So get your friend Apply. Grandma
Apply. Anybody else that'swilling to apply, your dog. Your
dog.
Kayci Messerly (21:28):
You get Don't apply. Don't your dog. Don't do
that.
Phil Lavretsky (21:31):
Dog retrieves? Ugh.
Kayci Messerly (21:33):
But we've we've had so many great birds to
showcase as well. Just lastmonth, we had Teal Timber Yes. A
brainchild of Katie's here.
Katie Tucker (21:42):
Thank you. Goosetober this month, please
follow.
Kayci Messerly (21:45):
Yeah. Goosetoberfest is currently
going on. Spooky gooses. Yes.Which is also another brainchild
of Katie's.
Congratulations on being so verycreative.
Katie Tucker (21:55):
Well, it's all thanks to the hunter sending in
these birds.
Kayci Messerly (21:57):
I mean, this is true. But we had one very
interesting TLS month.
Katie Tucker (22:02):
Was it perhaps a little one?
Kayci Messerly (22:04):
It was. A little white bird? A little white bird.
Is there more you can tell usabout our little white bird?
Phil Lavretsky (22:10):
It was a green winged teal.
Kayci Messerly (22:11):
It was a green winged teal? And how did we know
that?
Phil Lavretsky (22:13):
I need to I need to caveat so everybody
understands how I do thisprocess and how this process
occurs. I don't know anythingabout the sample except its
genetics. In fact
Kayci Messerly (22:25):
deja vu. Right? On every podcast, we say this,
and there's a reason we saythis.
Phil Lavretsky (22:29):
There I I actually, to be fair, and my and
doctor Mike Brazier can vouchfor this in a future podcast if
he's ever invited again, that Itext him being like, that's what
that bird was? Or that's whatthat bird looked like after
seeing it on Instagram. I don'tactually look at it. I just let
(22:52):
the genetics go, and I call themI I identify the sex based on
genetics, and I identify theirancestry, and then I send that
off. Right?
I don't look who shot it, whereit was shot, what was happening,
what the pictures were. I don'task for any of that information.
And so it really is completely Icompletely go at it, and I call
(23:15):
everything completely blind. Sothis recent one, honestly, when
I called it, I was like, yeah,somebody sends a green wing
teal. So I've added it to ourreference set.
Maybe I should could I I shouldlook at it again. But, like,
yeah, I've ran it several times.Always a green winged teal. The
but more importantly, that themitochondrial is still green
winged teal. And I understandthat some folks have discussed
(23:39):
that maybe this looks like acold duck or, well, that's the
only discussion, actually.
And so what I need to make clearis a cold duck is part of the
mallard domestic mallardcomplex. And so a cold duck was
part of the domestication eventthat happened about twenty five
(24:00):
hundred years ago in in China inthe during the Ming dynasty
where they started todomesticate mallards for
agricultural purposes and otherpurposes. So you could think of
the Peking duck or the Rowans orthe runner ducks or cold ducks.
They all stem from that sort ofevent. That was the wolf to dog
situation.
(24:20):
Right? So at that point, peoplewere making whatever breed that
they were interested in, whetherit was for food, meaning fatter,
better better meat, or for moreegg production, larger eggs,
larger clutches. All of thosekinds of traits have been picked
on, picked for by peoplethroughout time for various
reasons. We'll eventually, I'msure, talk about game farm
(24:42):
mallards, which only in the lasttwo months have I understood or
visualized in my own brain thatit's actually a distinct
domestication event. It was notpart of this old domestication
event because it was KingCharles the second that told
somebody to go out and get wildmallard eggs, bring them to
captivity to once againpropagate.
(25:03):
So it's it's not like somebodygoing out like, oh, let's get a
Pekin' duck and turn it back toa mallard looking thing. That it
was completely distinct. But acold duck is very much in this
larger, older domesticationevent, and thus, they carry old
world a mitochondrial lineage.
Kayci Messerly (25:22):
And so you mentioned this mitochondrial
lineage, and for those of us whomaybe are a last reference to
the mitochondria is that it'sthe powerhouse of the cell.
Right?
Phil Lavretsky (25:32):
I I mean, that'd be amazing if that was the last
thing
Kayci Messerly (25:35):
you knew about it. But you you have the
mitochondrial DNA that you'retalking about Yes. And then you
also have an additional type ofDNA that you're looking at. So
it's not one source ofinformation that you're Correct.
Looking at for each of these.
Phil Lavretsky (25:50):
So for every sample, if you have a
certificate or look or googlingit up right now, you would see
that you have two source ofinformation. One tells you
ancestral proportions. This islike your mom and dad. Who was
your mom and dad? Was it was moma pintail or your dad a mallard
(26:10):
or they were both pintails andthus you're that's why you're a
100% pintail?
That's what that tells us. Andwhen you are a hybrid, it's
that's when the mitochondriallineage is increasingly
important because themitochondrial is only mom. And
so mom gives the mitochondrialDNA to all her kids, the same
exact one. Dad does not provideany of that material. Anybody
(26:32):
who's listening right now, yourbrothers and your sisters, all
have the same mitochondriallineage.
It's completely the same. And soin that case right? So as I
said, if I see that anindividual's 50% Mallard and 50%
Pintail and the mitochondrial isPintail, I knew that mom must
have been a Pintail and dad wasthe green head. And that's how
(26:56):
we can start figuring thosethings out. And in this call non
call duck situation, if it was acall duck, it would it would not
only not have a a green wingteal mitochondrial lineage, but
it would it the and it it wouldhave a a Mallard mitochondrial
lineage.
On top of it, it would alsoancestrally run closer to our
(27:18):
Khaki Campbell reference setthan anything else.
VO (27:29):
Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan and Bird DogWhiskey. After these messages.
Kayci Messerly (29:27):
For those of you that are listening right now, we
recently did a podcast that kindof shows some of this mapping
and grouping that we've beentalking about. So if you go back
and listen to that, there's alsovisuals associated with that
that'll help you kind ofvisualize some of that grouping
that Phil's been talking aboutas well.
Phil Lavretsky (29:43):
So the the main point here is that this sample
was a 100% and ancestrally a100% green winged teal and it
carried a green winged tealmitochondrial haplotype, which
is almost two two million yearsremoved from a Mallard
mitochondrial haplotype. It'snot a Mallard. I don't know how
to make it any better.
Kayci Messerly (30:02):
No. I think that was great and a lot to unpack
there. We talked too aboutknowing, you know, we can
identify who the mom and the dadis, and we've seen some of these
really cool visualcharacteristics where sometimes
it doesn't really look that muchlike mom or dad. Sometimes
there's some characteristicsthat are coming in that are a
(30:23):
little bit in between somethingelse coming in. Can you help us
understand where thesecharacteristics are coming from?
Phil Lavretsky (30:30):
Yeah. What a great question.
Katie Tucker (30:32):
I mean,
Phil Lavretsky (30:32):
I Is it like
Katie Tucker (30:33):
the verstuck with like the cheek patch situation?
Like that kind of thing?
Kayci Messerly (30:37):
It can be a cheek patch. We've also had a
couple of blue wing teal,cinnamon teal hybrids that then
show some shoveler like traitscolor wise, or shoveler blue
winged teal. We've had a couplethat maybe there's some extra
coloration you wouldn'tnecessarily expect between the
two individuals.
Phil Lavretsky (30:54):
Yeah. So so in the genetic world, that's called
transgressive expression, whereyou where the hybrid the
combination of genes between twodistinct parental pools results
in an individual that expressesa trait that neither of the
parents actually have. Now forthe blue wing group, closely
(31:15):
related, and in which case, it'svery likely that those genes are
there, but they are suppressedin certain of the species. So a
blue wing a blue wing teal and acinnamon teal don't express the
green in the head like the shutnorthern shoveler. But when put
together, the mechanism thatsuppresses that likely became
malfunctioning, and thus you geta bit of that green.
(31:38):
The real questions and the realanswers to that will only come
about once we have enough ofthese samples. We're starting to
get close to trying to map out abrewer's duck, so the Gadigal
Mallard because peep enoughpeople have sent in the the
definitely not not nearly asmany as we really need to do
this, but trying to figure outif the expression in a brewer's
(32:01):
duck is stochastic or random.And so it's just dependent on
what what the pair who theparents are and how those g
genomes kind of interacted, oris it predictable? Like, are
there traits that are reallypredictable and constantly seen
in those in those brewer's duck?Again, the only way to do this
(32:22):
completely unfeasible only fiveyears ago is to amass a dataset
that has enough of thatvariation to start asking that
question, and only through DuckDNA currently have we been able
to achieve it.
Kayci Messerly (32:35):
Yeah. And so you you talk about how that those
genomes interact with eachother. When you say that, you
mean how it's mixing they mix.How they mix together.
Phil Lavretsky (32:46):
Yeah. So so imagine you have a gene and it
needs to stay to it needs tostay whole to make the the
cinnamon color. And if you breakit, it's not very good at making
cinnamon. It makes more of likea brownish or maybe even a
green. Right?
And so if the two parents cometogether and break at that point
(33:10):
and maybe either maybemalfunctioning or slightly okay
or maybe it puts together agreen and a red, not all of a
sudden you get other types ofcolors, then that is when that's
the mixing that we're talkingabout, and we don't know how
that mixes. We're hoping tostart some new analyses. Like I
said earlier, we are justgetting to the point where we
(33:31):
have enough of the parent a andthe parent b of all these types
and the hybrids to start askingwhat parts of the genome are
responsible for some of thesetraits. And so, yeah, hopefully,
in the next year or two with theincreasing number of samples
from Duck DNA, work in my lab,we're gonna start mapping out
where these traits are andwhether they're predictable.
(33:54):
Right?
So is the green head on amallard the same location as a
green head on a northernshoveler? That's never been
really asked because nobody'sbeen able to do it. So,
hopefully and the same thingcould go for, like, right, the
colorations of the of reds andoranges, are they the same
processes across all thesespecies? And when they get
(34:14):
broken down, do they do theyresult in the same trait changes
in the hybrid?
Katie Tucker (34:19):
Not to get too nerdy, but the blue in bird
feathers actually isn't apigment. Structural. So that's
interesting when you're talkingabout hybridization with
different colors of feathers.Yeah. There's a blue tint coming
in, and that's totally not evenrelated to a pigment coming from
the bird.
Phil Lavretsky (34:34):
But to make that blue requires a structure, and
the structure is genetics. Yes.Because you need the structure
to be in a specific way. Itnobody can see my hands, so,
like, I don't know what I'mdoing. But, like, I'm creating a
lattice with my hands, and ifthat lattice changes direction,
the way the light hits it wouldwill change it, and thus the
(34:54):
coloration changes.
Katie Tucker (34:55):
So when I see, like, a a purple feather, I'm
like, oh, blue and red. Crazy.But I have a coming back to the
blue winged Ducks, I have aquestion. We've had some
comments about the Northernshoveler Blue Winged Teal
hybrids and their similarity tothe Australasian shoveler.
Phil Lavretsky (35:09):
Oh, that they look the same?
Katie Tucker (35:10):
Yeah. Does that say anything about their
relatedness? Just that they looksimilar?
Phil Lavretsky (35:13):
I mean, so the Australasian shoveler is still
part of the shoveler group, justlike the red shoveler. So
they're all part of the they'restill all part of the blue wing
group. Right? What that actuallytells me is something mixed, and
for whatever reason in theAustralasian shoveler, that was
the trait that was eitherbeneficial in that ecology or
(35:34):
the females began to pick on,right, the sort of mating
situation, and that's what tookoff. Right?
But you're right. That's a greatquestion. If we go to an
Australasian shovel, which wehave two in my freezer, do we
does the genetics line up thatresults in the phenotype of a
hybrid? Is it the same exactmechanism that results in the
(35:55):
Australasian shovel?
Katie Tucker (35:56):
You tell us.
Phil Lavretsky (35:57):
I one day. But that's great. Now I gotta go
back to work, and it's like11PM.
Kayci Messerly (36:03):
Come on, you gotta get on it. It's only
09:40. Them now.
Katie Tucker (36:05):
You got another hour.
Kayci Messerly (36:07):
You talked about the potential to kind of map
some of these characteristics sothat people can understand where
these traits are coming from.Where is this information coming
from so you know where to mapit? Is it all coming out of your
lab? Is this information that'sbeen built over time you have
resources to?
Phil Lavretsky (36:26):
Yeah, yeah. So a combination of a lot of that. So
for a very long so there's awhole bunch of other labs that
are trying to understand geneticmechanisms. So like, what does
this gene do, or what does thatgene do? And so they'll map.
They'll figure out what they areby doing a whole bunch of
different experiments. A lot ofit comes from mammalian systems,
(36:49):
because obviously that's what westudy. And so what we're a lot
of that is mapped that way, andso we have to make some
additional inferences. Right? Soif we have a gene that is quote,
unquote, coded for hair folliclegrowth as it would be in a
mammal, we would think thatthat's a gene important for
(37:10):
feather growth as well.
We'd have to make that leap.That being said, color in birds
has been studied extensively.Many of those genes have been
mapped. They're particularly on,as we had talked about earlier,
on the sex chromosome, but alsoon chromosome one. And luckily
enough, our markers are hittingthose locations.
I know this because we've lookedat this. And so because of that,
(37:33):
we can start looking how many ofthese genes are associated to
particular traits and andwhether they are, right, or
whether it's some other thingthat we don't know about. So the
nice thing is that the genome isgenerally mapped through all
through all of these otherresearch programs and and work
(37:53):
and studies across the world,and we can use that information
to make additional inferencesand start mapping it out that
way. If anybody's done 23 and Mewhen it was alive or
ancestry.com and you have allthese things, you're like, oh,
you are, you know, you have aten percent chance of having
diabetes because you have thesegenes. We can do the same thing,
(38:14):
except it'd be like, that's whythis bird had a red patch.
Kayci Messerly (38:18):
That's super cool. Getting very close to some
very exciting things for sure.But it it is exciting how all of
this can build upon each other.You know, this information
that's out there can informthese new findings that we're
having and allows us to targetspecific characteristics that
we're looking for. Anotheraspect, you know, that about
(38:41):
this is that we're not justlooking for visual
characteristics.
That's some of the most obviousthings for someone out in the
field who's got the bird inhand, right, but genetics is so
much more too, than just what wesee on the surface of the bird.
What are some of the otherthings that your lab is diving
into or is really interested inthat maybe is not something we
(39:03):
can just see?
Phil Lavretsky (39:04):
Yeah, I mean, so a lot of the things that we're
that we're diving into theunderneath the, like, the the
the feathers really having to doand, obviously, we can expand on
this for any other species. Butwe're right now super keen in
understanding how thedomestication process has
changed the game farm mallardfrom its wild ancestor. So you
(39:27):
guys got to listen to some ofthe talks from, you know, little
speed talks, although they'resupposed to be speedy, they
weren't sometimes, but, like,some of the things that we're
doing. And we're throwingkitchen sink at this thing and
and trying to figure out, okay.Genetically, these things are
different.
Can we tie it to a a truemechanism? Can we tie it to that
(39:48):
the brains are different, thattheir functionality is
different, that their metabolismis different, that their feeding
efficiency is different, thatthe survive that their migratory
behavior is different, that thesurvival is different, that
their habitat choices are alldifferent. And right now, we've
been able to have a prettyamazingly, so genetic link
(40:08):
association to all of thosetraits. Right? We know that some
proportion of those traits areexplained by genetics, and
there's always environment,obviously.
The just like you your ownheight. Right? Obviously, I was
supposed to be an awesomefootball player, but I just
didn't get the rightenvironment, and I never got
picked by the 49ers. So I'm ageneticist. So that that's that
(40:33):
in a nutshell is is what iteverything's got genetics and
environment that explain thetrait itself.
And we're trying to dive intohow much does the genetics play
a role. And currently, all ofthe traits we've looked at have
we've identified that theancestry of those individuals
(40:56):
dictates the trait at a reallyhigh correlation. And now what
we're able to do, as we talkedabout earlier, because we have
all this genetic material, wecan pinpoint where on the genome
that has changed and how it'schanged that explains the brain
change, that the migratorybehavioral changes, the
physiological changes, thebehavioral changes. All of these
(41:19):
things have a genetic component,and we're racing to find them.
Kayci Messerly (41:23):
And so all of these characteristics, whether
they're physiological,behavioral, you know, these
visual characteristics thatpeople can see, are spread
throughout the genome? They'reclose by to each other?
Phil Lavretsky (41:37):
We don't know.
Kayci Messerly (41:38):
It could be any of these things.
Phil Lavretsky (41:39):
Yeah. So every chromosome that mom and dad gave
you has an important role toplay. Much like you, they all
have an important role to playfor a duck, right? So migration
might be several genes onseveral chromosomes. The brain
might be a few genes on onechromosome.
Right? They're all together.They all have to be together in
(42:01):
a particular way to make a wildbrain that knows it's time to
migrate. It's time to feed. It'stime to nest.
All of those innate responsesthat these things have. And so
that's what we're that's abottom line of my research
program is to also understandhow much of this is how much is
genetics responsible and wherein the genome. And is it always
(42:24):
the same ones when you'relooking at different species?
Did it independently evolve in ato migrate in a in a pintail as
it did in a mallard? Like, wecan start asking those kinds of
questions as we build this dataup.
On top and on top of it, we knowwhere these birds went. We know
how what tie the timing of theirmigration. We know where they
(42:45):
were harvested so we can extractthe information, whether it was
rural or whether it was urban,and whether the and so we can
start testing if there's geneticchanges that are resulting at a
population level for birds toall of a sudden be more or less
overt to urban settings. Justthat simple question. You know?
(43:06):
Are mallards doing better inurban settings just because
they're domestic, or there's achange? You know? These kinds of
questions. Are pintail and othermore wild birds or averting from
those locations more so thanothers? Right?
So these kinds of questions wecan start asking.
Katie Tucker (43:21):
And this is thanks to the hunter scientists from
Duck DNA.
Phil Lavretsky (43:24):
100%. Thank you.
Kayci Messerly (43:26):
And so so you're talking about these selection
pressures that can help, youknow, kind of these changes one
way or the other. Are therecertain areas that are just
naturally more likely to pick upthese changes, or certain areas
that are less likely to bechanged, remixed?
Phil Lavretsky (43:44):
So evolution So these changes evolved over eons.
Right? Generations of pintailand mallards and green winged
teal all surviving and breeding,and the next generation
hopefully being better than theprevious. Right? And the if
things rapidly change like itdid for the dinosaurs or the
(44:06):
mammoths, they die.
Right? They can't keep up withchange at that kind of pace. It
takes a long it's a longprocess. It's not like, hey,
polar bear, you know, get readyto come to El Paso. You know?
That's not gonna work outbecause they become they were so
well adapted to the ecology thatthey had. Right? That they went
so far ahead that there reallyis nothing else that they can be
(44:28):
good at. What ducks are good at,though, their adaptability,
quote, unquote, is the fact thatthey're able if there is water,
they can find it. And so whetherthey have to fly a few more 100
kilometers north to find it inthe Northwest Territories now
rather than the prairie potholesis another kind of question.
Right? There it but they have tohave that innate response to go
(44:51):
find it. It's kinda like salmon.They have to they have to have
the capacity to swim swimupstream to make kids, but so
many captive salmon lose thattrait, and in which case, you
could have a whole bunch ofsalmon out there, but nobody's
coming up.
Kayci Messerly (45:06):
I think as we we've been here over the past
couple of days, which feels likeso much longer, but also that we
need so much more time here atthe same time, we've had a great
time going through the lab.We've seen Hunter's notes that
have been sent in fromparticipants that have sent
their samples in and got tospeak to Virgie and Victoria
(45:26):
about how those little notes canreally brighten your day and get
you excited about the next runthat you're doing and all of
that excitement. What has beensome of the most interesting and
exciting things that have comeout of this for you that maybe
you didn't even expect over thelast few years?
Phil Lavretsky (45:44):
Well, I didn't expect any notes. And to be
fair, I don't actually see thosenotes. So the samples come in
and my team gets them.
Kayci Messerly (45:52):
They don't tell you?
Phil Lavretsky (45:53):
They don't even tell me.
Kayci Messerly (45:54):
Oh, no.
Phil Lavretsky (45:54):
And so and so I want you to you, the audience,
and those that are participatingin Duck DNA, to please go ahead
and write those notes. My teamloves those notes, and you're
right. Like, after a good, youknow, me shaking my finger and
being really angry moment, thosenotes keep them, you know, happy
(46:15):
and alive and wanting to processyour samples as fast as
possible, and and, yeah, it doesit does cheer them up. They
loved all the notes that theyget through the program in the
boxes themselves. Me, on my end,is the fact that we are going
into year three.
I didn't even under I didn't seethat coming. The fact that other
(46:37):
people are just as excited as Iwas when me and and Mike Brazier
had this conversation, and thenI was sitting in a duck blind.
I'd be like, yeah. That thiswould be super awesome as I shot
a green head, and I'm like, god.I hope there's no Game Farm
genes in this thing.
And I'm like, I wonder ifanybody else would have that
thought. And now we know thatthere's a ton of folks, and I'm
(46:59):
appreciative of that. That'sbeen the biggest light bulb
moment or or or whatever youwanna call it at this hour.
Kayci Messerly (47:06):
I think we as scientists just get so excited
and kind of into our work thatwe get very passionate about it,
and sometimes that passion maynot be shared by a wide group or
a wide audience, and to get tosee that actually happen and
take light and people reallylove and pour into this project
(47:26):
has been just insane. And thosenotes of enthusiasm and
encouragement go a long way too.
Phil Lavretsky (47:33):
Oh,
Katie Tucker (47:33):
yeah. And the email's to us too. Yes.
DuckDNAdux dot org. Just andlike, I come from a laboratory
science background and justinteracting with members of the
public that care about all ofthis stuff just as much as I do,
like, literally brings tears tomy eyes sometimes.
I'm just so grateful
Kayci Messerly (47:48):
to work with the hunters that that are so
invested in the wildlife. Yeah,it's a very rewarding and
humbling experience, and to getto sit down with you and your
team and the people that havebuilt this, you know, from the
ground up, birthed it intoexistence, you know, with the
support and power of the huntersbehind the project, it has been
(48:11):
just very humbling andincredible over the time we've
got to spend with it.
Phil Lavretsky (48:15):
Absolutely. I mean, I couldn't say it any
better. But I did wanna I didwanna say that some things on
the horizon that we're hoping toget the timetable figured out,
you know, for this year, we'restill looking at that eight to
ten weeks. And in all honesty,the reason behind that is the
fact that hunting seasons alignwith holiday season. And so
(48:39):
places shut down.
We have to wait to send outsequences, especially for those
of you who finish out yourseasons at the November. Right?
You're sending it in. A lot ofthe the sequencing facilities
are closed come even as early asDecember 15. And they and and
then UTEP itself is closed, andit doesn't even open till, like,
(49:02):
mid January.
And so we're constantly battlingthis this you know, juggling
these dates and trying to getahead of it all the time. But
sometimes it's just impossiblebecause, you know, you've gotta
wait for others and the youknow, these pumpkin spice
lattes.
Kayci Messerly (49:20):
So Don't hate on the pumpkin spice lattes. No.
That's gonna be a problem.
Phil Lavretsky (49:24):
But I will say, and you guys saw it. It's not
operational, but, like, we dohave a robot. We hope that that
is going to actually quicken thepace. We're gonna we're gonna
implement it, I hope, this yearfor the first time. We'll see
what that looks like.
We'll play around with the itsabilities and to see how we can
maximize its output to minimizetime to completion. But, again,
(49:50):
everybody who's listening andparticipating, you know, think
about it as an eight to ten weekkind of process from you sending
it out to you receiving yourcertificates.
Kayci Messerly (49:59):
A reminder that science is a process. We learn
as we go. Science takes time,and this is probably one of the
most rapid turnarounds I've seenin any science that I've been a
part of.
Phil Lavretsky (50:10):
Genetics in particular, which used to be
years Yeah. Sometimes in theyears to the And so it's always
been my goal to be able to getthings to the point where
genetics is a tool that providesinformation within the
management time frame. And Ithink we're getting there. So
Kayci Messerly (50:33):
And ask your questions. Continue to fuel the
curiosity. Curiosity. That'ssomething that gets us engaged
and encouraged as well. Ask thequestions you have.
Don't be afraid. We have lots ofanswers and if we don't know, we
just find Phil and we shove himin the comments section. Yes.
Phil Lavretsky (50:48):
Absolutely. And I was gonna say, you can get
ahold of me through variousways, through the Duck DNA team
or you can even contact medirectly. Instagram is at,
lavretskylab or it's,plavretsky@utep.edu. You could
just find my email at our labwebsite. If you just do the
(51:08):
doctor Phil Ducks genetics onGoogle, I'm sure you could find
Kayci Messerly (51:12):
it. But they know how
Katie Tucker (51:13):
to spell your last name by now, probably.
Phil Lavretsky (51:15):
Yeah. It's Gretsky with love, loveretsky.
Kayci Messerly (51:19):
Well, thank you for sitting down with us, Phil.
After a a long couple of days,we stole your night hours away
from you as well. We reallyappreciate it and our audience
does too. We look forward todoing this hopefully again real
soon.
Phil Lavretsky (51:33):
Next time at your house.
Kayci Messerly (51:34):
Next time in Memphis. Okay. A special thanks
to our guests, doctor PhilLebretsky, Katie Tucker, and our
producers, as well as, ofcourse, our listeners. And thank
you for supporting wetlands andwaterfowl conservation.
VO (51:50):
Thank you for listening to the DU podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan, the officialperformance dog food of Ducks
Unlimited. Purina Pro Plan,always advancing. Also proudly
sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskeyand Cock Tails. Whether you're
winding down with your bestfriend or celebrating with your
favorite crew, Bird Dog bringsaward winning flavor to every
moment. Enjoy responsibly.
(52:13):
Be sure to rate, review, andsubscribe to the show and visit
ducks.org/dupodcast. Opinionsexpressed by guests do not
necessarily reflect those ofDucks Unlimited. Until next
time, stay tuned to the Ducks.
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